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6 x 9 paperback cream |
ISBN: 9781432746827 |
$16.95 |
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Guys With Really Bad Shoes will defy your mother's old adage that every man can be judged by the shoes that he wears. In this gritty and cleverly written novel, Taura Lewis is looking in all the wrong places for the man to fit her father's size 14 shoes: Nike Jordan 18, Timberland 24, and Ferragamo 30, are just a few of the men that walk in and out of Taura's life. Only one man, who wears many shoes, helps to guide this young 20 something-year-old through a life of sex, betrayal, lies, sadness, tragedy, and triumph.
“Wolfe writes with an innocent honesty that is certain to draw readers to this story! The journey of Taura is one that countless young women of all walks of life can identify with.” - Ra’Chelle Rogers, Publicist (Phila~sophy pr/ESSENCE)
"Wolfe denotes an eerie tale of “good girl gone bad” in this gritty urban novel about a young woman, searching for a man to fill her father’s shoes. The main character, Taura depicts every young girl caught up in a well intended, yet dysfunctional family, and the “Shoes” are every real father’s nightmare. Wolfe uses her words and provides a sure reminder to our young men, particularly young black men, that the man that you are is most likely the man that your daughters will seek out." - C.J. Washington, Lifestyle Editor- The Source Magazine
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1989, Hackensack, New Jersey
“Come let my mom read your palm,” Beatrice said to Heather and me. It was Halloween night and Girl Scout Troop 164 was hosting its annual Halloween party to 10 Brownie, Junior and Cadet troops in the lunchroom of St. Timothy’s Roman Catholic School. Heather and I just
spent the last 15 minutes waiting in line to feel the spaghetti brains and peeled grape eyeballs. I didn’t understand what getting my palm read meant, but if Beatrice Kakowski was suggesting it, and her mother
was involved in it, it had to be big. Beatrice was an eighth grader, with
blond highlights and who wore her plaid, pleated, uniform skirt midthigh.
Unlike the other girls at St. Timothy’s, Beatrice wore earrings that dangled to her shoulders and she was allowed to wear colored lip gloss. She
and her cousin Jennifer were the definition of cool.
“Come on Taura,” Heather said, looking back at Beatrice and Jennifer. “We can do the haunted house later.” Later never came. The line for Beatrice’s mother’s palm reading extended
through half the cafeteria and there was only an hour left in the party. But, who was I to question Heather?
Heather Matthews was tall and pudgy with pale white skin and Irish blue eyes. She wasn’t as pretty as our other friends Jessica, Stephanie,
Tiffany and Gabriella, but she was good at math and sports and that was
even better than looks. Heather was the tall one, Jessica was the pretty
one, Stephanie was cuddly and cute like a teddy bear and Tiffany was the blonde one. As for me, I stood out because I was the black one.
At winter recital, my parents were the only black presence in the audience.
At breakfast with Santa, my three sisters and I were the only black elves handing out candy canes and coloring books. And in the 52-year
history of St. Timothy’s, there were probably only two other black students.
But they didn’t stay. Tawana left after first grade and Hassan came in the third and was out by fifth. St. Timothy’s was for kindergarten
through 12th grade and one by one all three of my sisters did communion, confirmation, and then graduation. It was in the seventh grade that the
students at St. Timothy’s prepared for confirmation, graduation, and the
highlight of our eighth grade year, the Pocono’s overnight trip.
“Did you guys get to the haunted mansion?” Stephanie asked wearing
her round, orange pumpkin costume, green stem cloth hat, black
tights, and shiny black baby doll shoes.
“We thought it would be way cooler to get our palms read with Beatrice’s mom,” Heather said before I could speak up.
“Oh!” Stephanie said looking at the line of superstitious admirers.
“You mind if Tif and I cut in?”
Stephanie began squeezing her round, orange bump between me
and the girl dressed like Raggedy Anne standing behind me. Just then Tiffany wearing white bunny ears and a gray leotard with a fuzzy
cotton ball on her bottom squeezed in between Heather and in front of
Stephanie. Tiffany also had white gloves that went all the way to her forearms, like Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” video, and a bunny
nose with whiskers attached. I thought Raggedy Anne’s red curls would have turned straight up on top of her head with the amount of ho humming and mumbling under her breath. Tiffany was a cheerleader for
our boys basketball team, so she had on her Thom McAn black and white, cheerleader lace-ups. In a matter of minutes, Jessica, wearing
her red devil costume and matching black cape with black Prada open toe heels, and Gabriella, dressed as Peter Pan in full green garb with matching handmade moccasins, joined us in the line. I, on the other
hand, wore my Tom and Jerry nightgown, hair in two ponytails with freckles and my black polished penny loafer school shoes. Raggedy Anne almost turned purple until she noticed Jessica and Gabriella trying to cut in front of her.
“Oh, hi Jessica,” Raggedy Anne said, her cheeks turning as red as her hair. “You can cut in front of me.”
Jessica looked Raggedy Anne from head to toe and stood tall in front of her.
“Next in line,” Beatrice’s mother said.
Beatrice’s mother naturally looked like a witch. Unlike Beatrice, her mother had frizzy auburn dyed hair and a big crooked nose. She was a
heavyset woman with a black dress on that reminded me of a tablecloth draped over her large frame.
“So sweetie, what is your name?” Beatrice’s mother said looking me twice over from head to shoes.
“Taura Lewis,” I replied nervously.
“Taura! That is such a beautiful name,” she said. “And what are you
suppose to be for Halloween?”
I thought my costume was pretty obvious—footsies, freckles, cabbage
patch doll, baby bottle filled with my father’s shaving cream.
“A baby,” I said, knowing that the costume was not store bought, but
homemade.
In addition to my everyday Tom and Jerry nightgown, my mother’s black eyeliner stained my cheeks as freckles, and I borrowed a baby bottle from my neighbors, the Wilsons. I promised that I would clean it, once I was finished, and return it in the morning.
“Okay Taura,” she said with a look of sadness for my choice of costume, “have a seat dear and give me your left hand.” I sat down across the table and stretched out my light brown arm, palm open.
“Tell me Taura,” she glared at me with glowing green eyes through heavy globs of eyeliner, and eyelashes that sparkled, dropping little green sparkles on the end of her crooked nose and in my palm. “What do you
want to be when you grow up?”
That was easy. My entire 12 years of life was spent in the Hackensack Library reading books and writing short stories and poems. Add to it my father’s ambitious eyes to what he would call ‘my talent for writing,’ and he and I knew I was going to be the next Rolanda Watts, from Channel 7 News.
“I’m going to be a writer,” I said with an uneasy broad smile.
“Yes sweetie,” Beatrice’s mother said. “I’m sure you will.” Her lips
said it, but her face said something else as she looked at the cracks and ash
in the corners of the palm of my hand.
“Oh darling!” she said with more sadness in her voice, then on her face, “I don’t see success. I see that you are going to have three children for three different men. Life is going to be hard for you and you will always
chase success.”
I didn’t quite understand what she was saying except the three kids
with the three men part. Before the goofy grin that was on my face could
disappear, Beatrice’s mother was sending me on my way and waving for Stephanie to sit in the seat across from her, “Keep hoping for the best dear. Good luck.”
I never told my sisters what Beatrice’s mother said.
I used to polish over the polish, at times covering the hole at the toe of my shoe and the toe of the green uniform socks to blend in with my black shoes. Then I let them sit and dry and brushed my black penny loafer
shoes the Sunday evening before Monday school. But my father would always say no matter how shiny I polished my shoes to let them look like new, the parents of my Oradell, New Milfred and Teaneck friends would never
except the little black girl who wore last years Payless penny loafer shoes. My father, a corrections deputy by day and a bus driver on the weekend, and my mother, a bank teller, sent my sisters and me to the $1800 a month
Catholic school. We lived in the wealthy neighborhood of Hackensack on top of a hill of skyscrapers. The building we lived in was two doors down
from a famous, young television actress and across the street from an actress
best known as her athlete boyfriend’s punching bag. And then there was us—a poor, working class family of six, trying to live the life of a
middle class family of six. My parents made sure that our uniforms were clean and perfectly pressed, but there were days when we didn’t have lights in the house or the phone was turned off, the family Oldsmobile wouldn’t
start up, and we were eating boiled crackers with butter, or condensed milk sandwiches for dinner. As much as my mother would plead with my father to send us to the local public school to save some money to buy a house or
to catch up on some bills, my father wouldn’t hear of it. My father wore many shoes, but never ever did he wear sneakers. To him being a big black man was hard enough without the stigma of sneakers, a basketball, and
a dream. Whatever he wore, whether they were Docksides, boat shoes or Oxfords they had to be shiny and well kept. I can remember running to Essex Street Shoe maker, to have a hole plugged in the sole of my father’s shoe or a shoelace replaced. And my father would stay up late nights polishing and brushing his work shoes and my sisters’ and my shoes for school. I admired my father’s tidy shoes, and clean appearance, but my sisters and I feared the wrath of those size fourteens. Education was the most important thing to him and at times, because my father had to prolong his education,
he resented my mother, sisters, and me for the three and four jobs he had to work for us to continue ours. I had no brothers, but that didn’t matter when it came to the values and punishment my father took out on my sisters and me. When my second-oldest sister Claire told my father
that she was going to a girl scout meeting and ended up going to try out for the girls basketball team, my father left the imprint of his size fourteen Oxfords in the back of her ass. And when my third oldest sister Jasmine
tried to mail a love letter to Danny Gonzalez, my mother had to jump on my father’s back to get those same size fourteen Docksides, off my sister’s face. She ended up in the emergency room.
It was the end of my seventh grade year when my father came home
one day announcing, “How would you guys like to live next to Disney
World?” My parents only a few months back took a long needed week vacation
to Florida to visit distant relatives of my father that recently moved
south. But this couldn’t be happening! It was my eighth grade year and
most of my friends were preparing for the Regents exam to go off to Don
Bosco Prep, Holy Angels and Paramus Catholic high schools. My parents
couldn’t be serious about us moving to Florida. It all hit me when one
minute my father was suggesting it, and the next, his four little tom girls
were lifting boxes and furniture to help load up the moving truck. My
friends’ parents opened their doors for me to stay with them to finish out
my last year with my friends, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. Before
I knew it, I was joining the ranks of sneakers, tennis shoes, flip-flops and
sandals at my zoned public school. There was no Disney World. In fact,
we moved four hours south of Mickey Mouse and Cinderella’s Castle. My
sisters all grew up with a solid foundation of Eastlands, Kenneth Cole
T-Straps, lace-ups, BALL-ET’s and Oxfords and instead I was introduced
to Nike’s, FUBU’s, flip flops and KEDS.
I can’t believe I did it! Oh my God! Do I look older? … I don’t feel
older,” I said to myself, staring in the mirror.
“Are you okay?” Jared asked. Jared was born and raised in Miami.
His family was from South Carolina. He had the southern drawl
that most of the natives had. It was a broken English—country,
mixed with slang.
“Yes!” I said startled, not realizing that he had been there. I
hoped that he didn’t hear me talking to myself.
“I just don’t want anyone to know,” I said, looking at the dark
smudges under my eyes made from my black mascara and red
cheeks made from my lipstick.
“Look,” Jared said, standing behind me as I looked at his reS
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flection in the mirror. I couldn’t look up at him. I could only stare
down at his bright white Nike sneakers with the gold swoosh to
match our gold homecoming ensemble. “I’m not like that. I’m not
gonna go back to school and say shit to anyone about us. This is
our business not theirs.”
How could I be so lucky to have found someone like Jared?
Running Back of the Broward High school Panthers, our high
school football team, tall, popular, and handsome. Jared made me
laugh and didn’t mind that I talked different because I had what they
called a northern accent. No slang and no country. The guys at our
school cat called me “red,” and “red bone,” while the girls called me
“white girl,” because of the way I talked. Even when I tried to use
my learned southern drawl my words fell out proper. But Jared never
did any of that. He could have dated any girl in school. I couldn’t
understand what he saw in me. I was student government president
and a bookworm. I weighed in at 153 pounds, and was clueless
when it came to clothes and what style was- in from out. I wasn’t
popular and I was probably the last virgin in my senior class.
During my senior year, my popularity took a turn for the better.
Not because of anything that I did, but, because of the people
that I started hanging out with. My brother Michael was the main
reason. Mike, or Nike Jordan 18, wasn’t really my brother. My sister
Jasmine and his sister Tia were best friends. So when Nike Jordan
18 transferred from St. Mathew’s into the public school system in
our junior year of high school, I was the only other person that he
knew. I was into books, Nike Jordan 18 was into everything else,
and all the girls were into him. He was cute, by their standards—
beautiful dark smooth skin and green eyes that he got from both
his mother and father. Nike Jordan 18 had the most beautiful smile
and always had a job, putting most of his money into his two-door
black Nissan Sentra. Nike Jordan 18 would take me home from
school and on some days pick me up in the morning. He would tell
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everyone that I’m his “little sister,” and because of that, no one ever
said another bad thing about me. In fact, I had instant friends and
was inducted into the most popular clique of four girls in school –
The AKA’s, “All Klass & Ass.”
7
“There’s a blood stain on my dress,” I said standing in the
bathroom looking down on my gold spaghetti strap Homecoming
dress, not even embarrassed by what I had said to Jared. “Can you
see it?” I said lifting my dress hem to the sink and running it under
the pipe.
My clique of four included “QB” for “queen bee”, “Gremlin”,
“On Point”, “Coolie” and me, “Hi-Jack.” QB nicknamed me Hi-Jack
because I used to “Jack my skirt up to mid-thigh.” Homecoming
was one of the many grand finales for senior year. The girls and I
decided that gold and silver were the colors of the night and every
one of us wore the crew’s agreed upon color. Our dates wore black
tuxedos with gold or silver cummerbund and bow tie depending
on the color of their date’s dress, with white Nike sneakers and the
swoosh to match the color.
“No,” Jared said taking my arm and turning me around slowly.
He then led me gently back to the bed. This was the best night of
my life and losing my virginity to Jared couldn’t have been more
beautiful. It was my senior year of high school, The Isley Brothers
“Living For The Love Of You,” was playing on the clock radio that
beamed in red flashing lights the time, 1:11a.m. And although I’d
been to homecoming my freshman, sophomore and junior years of
high school, tonight, Jared Williams loved me.
Nike Jordan, 18 –The Betrayal
“You fucked him Taura?” Nike Jordan 18 asked holding my
head down in a head lock, whispering angrily into my ear. “Did…
you...fuck…him? Did you suck his dick?”
I could hardly breathe let alone answer his question. I didn’t want
to answer his question, because I could tell that he wasn’t joking.
“Yes!” I managed to say. “Yes, I had sex with him…Mike I can’t
breathe.”
“Did…you…suck…his…dick?” Nike Jordan 18 said slower
into my ear, tightening his grip.
“No,” I managed to get out in between breaths. Almost instantly
that was enough for Nike Jordan 18 to release me from his
grip. “But he loves me Mike and I love him,” I said in my defense.
“He don’t love you,” Nike Jordan 18 said angrily pacing back
and forth. “Half the fucking school knows that you and him had sex
on homecoming night at that hotel. How do you think they know?
How do you think I know?”
Nike Jordan 18 wasn’t looking for an answer and I was too embarrassed
to give him one.
“I can’t believe you let that nigga take your virginity,” Nike
Jordan 18 said, sitting on the bench in the outside hallway. “And I
can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
S 10 S
While the whole school was in class, Nike Jordan 18 and I were
outside on hallway passes having this conversation.
“He told me he wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said, sitting down next
to Nike Jordan 18, not looking at him.
“He told the whole football team,” he said shaking his head
while holding it in his hands. “You were a virgin, Taura, why did
you do it?” He said rhetorically. “Well, fuck it. Was it good?” He
looked up with a wild grin and a glint in his green eyes.
After moving to Florida five years ago, I had never had a friend
like Nike Jordan 18. My promise of Disney World turned into a
house of horrors. My parents fought everyday over bills, my father’s
girlfriends and my mother’s lack of ambition to work. We
moved two times while living in Mirawood and now we were going
to be moving again. The owners of the house we rented wanted
us out because they were moving back into town. At least that’s
what my father told us. I think it was because we could no longer
afford the $1200 a month rent. When my father convinced my
mother to leave her job in New Jersey, she was just starting to move
up at the bank, getting a promotion to branch manager at North
Eastern Bank. Being in her early 30s, she was making $45,000 a
year with benefits; way more then what my father was making as
a corrections officer and working for the Maroone Bus Company.
He promised my mother that things would change. We would have
a big house and a beautiful backyard with no more WWF fighting
matches between them and his playboy days would be over.
The local sheriff ’s office in Florida was recruiting black men
and women to become sheriff deputies starting them off with pay
in the high 30s with great benefits.
“You’ll go down there and get a job at any one of those banks with all
the experience you have,” I remember hearing him tell my mother.
But the jobs weren’t there. I guess good ol southern Barrett
Bank didn’t get the memo of our move. Many of the banks that my
S 11 S
mother applied for weren’t ready for a black, female branch manager
with only a two year college degree. My father had a four year
degree and a hint of jealousy that my mother, who didn’t, worked
her way up at North Eastern Bank from a bank teller, to a branch
manager, to make a decent salary that at times had to support our
family. My mother looked and applied for jobs. My father looked
and applied for jobs for my mother. My father’s distant relatives
looked and applied for jobs for my mother and after one year, no
job and still renting, my mother went back to New Jersey temporarily
to get her job back, leaving my three sisters and me with our
father. When she returned, she got a job starting from the bottom
at Palisades Medical Center in the supply room.
My father always cheated on my mother and most of his affairs
were with women he met on the job as a police officer. At one
point, he was sleeping with our hairdresser. But his new girlfriend
wasn’t going away like the others. Eventually we found out that
she really wasn’t new. She was the reason my father was so eager
to move to Florida. Gloria was at the time living in the Bahamas
and my father had filed for her, her mother and her son to get
green cards to come to the United States. In the meantime, my
mother, father and I were moving out of our four bedroom house,
with the two car garage, swimming pool, sun room and setting up
new residence in a three bedroom apartment. My mother never
let my father forget what a failure of a husband, father and a man
he was to his family. She let him know every chance she got, even
if it costed her a black eye or a bruised leg. My two eldest sisters,
Jillian and Claire, moved out on their own. Jillian moved into her
own apartment and Claire moved into the dorms leaving me with
my parents and the madness in my house. My sister Jasmine was
kicked out of the house two months before the move. Jasmine was
more the black sheep of the family. Her friends were very important
to her. My oldest two sisters stuck to each other like glue. Jasmine
S 12 S
had her friends and her boyfriend, which by the way, was why she
was exiled from our house of horrors. After dating Henry for two
years, Jasmine thought it would be a good idea to introduce him to
my dad. Instead, my dad introduced her to the door. At the age of
18, she was on the streets looking for a place to live. Jasmine was in
college full-time and working two jobs to survive. One of the jobs
that she had was at the hospital with my mother. I had no one else
to turn to but Nike Jordan 18. I would spend hours on the phone
talking to him about nothing. He always kept his word, made me
feel safe and was always there when I needed him.
While living in our three bedroom apartment, my mother finally
kicked my father out. She was yelling at him from the shower as
he stood boring his eyes into her nude body. From how my mother
tells it, my father pushed her down into the shower and walked
calmly out into the living room, sat in the couch and turned on the
television. I heard my mother scream and came out of my room
just in time to see a flash of my mother’s nude, wet body enter the
kitchen, reach for a salad bowl and hurl it clear across the dining
room and directly into the living room, hitting my father in the
head. I turned and ran back into my room, fearing the backlash she
would get from that act of bravery. I leaned up against my bedroom
door and called Nike Jordan 18.
“I get off in 30 minutes, meet me downstairs,” he said.
And he was there.
I went to his house, hung out in his room and watched re-runs
of “Martin” on TV, lying next to him on his bed. Nike Jordan 18
was more then just a friend or a pre-tend big brother, he was the
father that I never had. He was my friend and my protector. My
father never told me he loved me and never told me he was proud
of me. He would come home from one of his three or four jobs
so angry. My sisters and I would listen for the car in the driveway
around the time he was due home, because none of us wanted to be
S 13 S
in his way when he or his fist got there. As soon as we would hear
the key in the door, or the car in the driveway, we would alert one
another that “Daddy’s home.” All bedroom doors would slam shut.
The music in our bedrooms would turn off, the television in the
sunroom would go cold, lights in the bedroom would dim, and the
house would become silent.
Nike Jordan 18 and I sat on the benches in the outdoor hallway
that the students nicknamed “15th Avenue.” We nicknamed the
benches that we sat on 15th avenue after the drug infested neighborhood
ruled by Miami High School. We called the benches that the
football players, drill squad and flag girls sat on “22nd Avenue.”
“I’m sorry Mike,” I said looking up at him, trying not to cry and
feeling the lump beginning to swell up in my neck. “What do you
think I should do?”
“Confront that nigga,” Nike Jordan 18 said. “You need to break
up with him, Taura. I told you that motherfucker didn’t love you.
Now he has the whole school thinking that my lil sisters some kind
of a slut, like them other whores.”
I didn’t want to break it off with Jared. What if he didn’t say
anything? But I didn’t want to disappoint Nike Jordan 18. Nike
Jordan 18 would never lie to me. Maybe if I had listened to him
in the first place, the whole school wouldn’t know about what I
thought was the most wonderful night of my life.
Ring…Ring…Ring, the bell sounded to alert the students that
lunch time is over and it’s time to get back to class.
Nike Jordan 18 and I never made it back to class. And I didn’t
care. I wasn’t really feeling much of anything.
“Look, I still love you,” Nike Jordan 18 said softly, moving closer
to sit next to me, putting his arm this time, gently around my neck.
“You are still my lil sister and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Nike Jordan 18 and I sat on the bench on “15th avenue” as my
girls the AKA’s started coming to lunch, and his group of friends
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started gathering around us. That was the hardest lunch to swallow
knowing that all of my friends knew what Jared and I had done this
past weekend.
“Hey babe,” QB, said sitting on the opposite side of Nike Jordan
18, giving him a kiss.
Through my friendship with Nike Jordan 18 I met Victoria,
QB, the leader of the AKA’s. Nike Jordan 18 and QB started dating
through a lot of three-way phone calls sponsored by me. I was
at the center of their relationship, but in a friendly way. The three
of us went to the mall, movies and skipped school and went to
lunch together. We hung out at QB’s house and I became officially
a member of the AKA girls. I could talk to Nike Jordan 18 and QB
about anything. We called Victoria “QB” because out of all of us,
her words were wise and the boys at Broward High were all attracted
to what they called “sweet honey”. QB wasn’t model pretty, but
she dressed in button-down shirts and Cavaricci pants, like she was
already in college. Her weave, nails and makeup was always done
right. And she was sassy in the way she spoke. She knew everything
about men. Her oldest sister Sasha was a real AKA, a member of
the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Florida South University, and all
five of us AKA’s were college bound and preparing to follow in her
footsteps of pink and green.
“Jared wants to talk to you?” Coolie said coming over to me.
“He’s standing on 22nd Avenue. What are you going to say to
him?”
Just as I looked over Coolie’s shoulder to look at Jared, I saw
him and Glen, another Panther’s player, walking toward me.
“I’m going to go,” I said to no one in particular, grabbing my
backpack and walking away from Jared. I needed to be alone, to
think, to cry.
“Taura,” Jared said walking toward me, the words echoing in
the outside hallway.
S 15 S
I just kept walking. I cut school and walked all the way home
that day. I didn’t turn to face Jared as he called my name. I didn’t
answer my cell phone when he tried to call me.
“What is this?” my mother said to me over the phone as I lay in
my bed. “I’m getting a call that you cut class today.”
“I got my period and I bled through my pants because I
didn’t have anything.” I lied to my mother. “And I had really bad
cramps.”
That was enough explanation. Living in my house these past
couple of months has been a breeze. My mother’s life and thoughts
evolved around my father. I didn’t have to answer for anything. I
was able to go to house parties, and stay as late as I wanted at Nike
Jordan 18’s. The last time I cut school and stayed home, I invited
Angelo, the school artist, to do a tattoo of a sun on my upper thigh
with his homemade drill. When my mother found out, she chased
me around the apartment with a baseball bat. But, I didn’t care.
Things started mattering less and less to me. Gone were the dreams
my father and I had of me becoming an editor at the New York Times,
or me being the next anchorwoman on Channel 7 News, or dreams
of getting out of this house and away from both of them. I started
paying less attention to my studies and more attention to my hair,
nails and clothes. My 3.5 New York University Journalism program
G.P.A. started slipping to a 2.5 Florida Southern University
Rhodes scholar.
“Taura, please answer the phone.… Alright….I don’t know what
your people are telling you, but I didn’t say anything to anybody about
us. I wouldn’t do that to you….Well, call me when you get this, if you
want to.”
“Coolie,” I said. “Can you take me to Jared’s house?”
Coolie and I became best friends because the fence in our back
yard connected our houses. We lived around the corner from each
other in the last house that my family actually lived together as a
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family. Coolie was 4’ll, cute, with jet black, Indian hair. She was a
spicy Trinidadian and very popular with the boys at school.
Coolie picked me up in her parents Rodeo truck. It was more
like her Rodeo. Coolie took care of her two little brothers Nadir
and Delton, cooking, cleaning and dressing them as if she were
their mother. She was like a little, grown woman. And my future
partner in crime.
“What are you going to say to him?” Coolie asked me while
pumping Beenie Man and singing….“We’havie getsum tonight/ we
havie getcha buddy evan by gunfight.”
“I don’t know what to say to him,” I said while feeling the
warm night air on my face from the open window and sunroof.
It was times like this that I would have called Nike Jordan 18
or QB, but had I called Nike Jordan 18 he would have wanted to
take me, and he would have said anything to convince me that Jared
was no good.
“Do you think he told everyone at school about us?” I said turning
to look at Coolie.
“I don’t know,” Coolie said lowering the volume on the music.
“But, who gives a fuck Taura how it got out? The fact is, it’s out and
who cares who knows?”
“Coolie are you still a virgin?” I thought this was as good a
time as any to ask her. I never thought to ask this question to her
before.
When you’re a virgin, you automatically assume everyone
around you is one. Nike Jordan 18 has been telling me all sorts of
things about Coolie that I didn’t want to believe. For some reason
he didn’t like for me to hang around Coolie too much. He was
more upset with the fact that although she claimed to be my best
friend, she ran against me for student government president. He
thought that she was “too fast” for me, and said that she had a bad
reputation. He always told me to watch out for her, that she wasn’t
S 17 S
the friend that I thought she was, but he wouldn’t give me any reasons
for his statements.
“I’ve given head, but that don’t count. I’ve never had full sex
before,” Coolie said in her proper, no patua, speaking voice, the
one we save for our parents, teachers, and family friends. “I swear
on my life I’m still a virgin Hi-Jack. And when I do it, you will be
one of the first to know.”
Mirawood is the last city bordering on Broward County before
entering Miami-Dade County. All of us as friends lived within
blocks of each other. Jared lived across the major intersection but
not far from Coolie’s and my house.
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About T. Bodene Wolfe
Canadian born author T. Bodene Wolfe has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from Long Island University. She has written for publications including The Source, Vibe and Complex Magazine, as well as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Newspaper. Wolfe currently resides in South Florida.
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