Something She Can Feel

TO YOU: AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

When I was twenty years old, I walked into an office at Henry Holt & Company to begin an editorial internship with a stranger who said she liked my get-up-and-go attitude as we worked on a project over the phone. This stranger, I would soon learn, was Tracy “Boss Lady” Sherrod, my first real boss, who would later become my mentor, career advisor, coach, corrector, agent, and good friend. As we have worked together in those capacities (some all at once) over the last twelve years, I have learned so much about what it means to put in work and expect the best.

Looking back at thirty-two, I recall one thing Tracy always said to me when I was in my early twenties and still had the belief that all I needed to be happy in life was a good husband and a good job. Laughing heartily at my little goings-on, she and her friend Beverly would always say, “Wait until you get into your thirties. None of this stuff you’re going through will matter. You’ll have a better understanding of who you are.” They’d walk off down the hallways at the office or into the busy New York streets, shaking their natural hair behind them as they continued into more serious conversation, and I’d say, “What do they know?”

Now, on the eve of my thirty-third birthday, my “Jesus year” (see Natasha Trethewey’s poem “Miscegenation”), I know that those martini sipping sister women knew a lot. This thirties thing and coming to a realization about who and what I am has been so real to me and in this short time, I’m confident in saying that I’ve blossomed into more of a woman than I could’ve imagined. What’s more, I’ve done it on my own; I’ve sacrificed, taken chances, been very afraid, sometimes a victim, but always victorious in the end.

I recall all of this to bring to light what I hope readers will get out of reading Journey’s story in this little, hopeful novel, which in many ways is simply a study of one person coming to a realization about her life—it isn’t working! It’s a bildungsroman about a grown, black woman who thought all she needed was a good man and a good job to be someone. And who learned, in some odd ways, that there’s got to be more.

That said, this book, Something She Can Feel, was written to acknowledge the journeys that all sister women have taken simply trying to see a true mirror image of themselves in a world that can be so hard on womenfolk.

In writing it, I first acknowledge the female spirit, the giver of life and hope in God, for inspiring this work and giving me the talent to bring it to life. To all of the sister women who have come before me—from my grandmother Julia Reid to my good-mother Jaimie Riley-Reid, thank you for believing in my dreams, supporting my vision, and having the courage to live in the world. To my sister peers, who are going through what I’m going through—you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Go on and get you some freedom! To the ladies at Kensington, who have worked with great patience and care with me on this project, Essence, Black Expressions, Romantic Times, all of the dedicated book club leaders, book reviewers, conference organizers, writers and readers—this women’s fiction thing has great power. It’s for us and mostly organized by us. Let’s continue to interface and grow.

Lastly, to my little sister girls—know that your dreams are your own, and whatever you want to be, be even better and bigger than that. Always search for something you can feel in your heart and in your soul first. The rest is trivial pursuit.

You treat me so much better than him.

And if I was sane, there’d be no competition.

But I’m in love with someone else.

—Jazmin Sullivan

“I’m In Love With Another Man”

Prologue:

DOA

June 22, 2008

Ghana, West Africa

There was a click. There was a bang.

And then everything behind me went frozen. Dead.

My arms reached out toward the man falling to the ground in front of me. My heart stopped beating. The only sounds in the room were the bracelets clanking on my wrists and the thump the stranger’s head made as it bounced hard against the barroom floor. I stood above him, frozen in place, and my throat felt tight and grainy. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think of what to do next. This was the closest I’d ever been to someone so near death, and the farthest I’d ever been from home.

When it was done, when it seemed that I and everyone else in the backroom was sure the thing was over, time flickered from being a still, silent thing to something real, something moving, quick and sneaky. This was no picture. No fiction. Not a part of the love song I’d written in my notebook. It was the real thing. What in the hell was I doing there?

I gasped.

I heard the sound of a woman, who I thought was one of the waitresses, screaming, a glass hitting the floor, men rising to their feet.

The little air I had left in my gut was forced out when an arm belted itself around my stomach. It was Dame pulling me out of the backroom, across the narrow dance floor, toward the door. I could see the gun, pointed up now, in his other hand.

“He’s dead. Oh-oh, my God, he’s dead,” I said, falling out of the bar behind Dame. The street was empty and we rushed, one behind the other, to hide behind an old van parked a ways down. “You killed him,” I said.

I turned and tried to stop to look at Dame. I wanted to see his eyes, so I could know that we both knew what was going on, what had happened in just seconds.

Minutes earlier, we’d been laughing with the stranger in the red shirt and tan hat. His skin was the color and shine of oil. He hovered above our table, his teeth and eyes perfectly white and glowing in the dim light. He’d smiled wide when I told him that since we’d

been in Ghana, Dame’s already shadowy skin had tanned to the color of midnight and my once-permed hair had sweated out into a moist, perfect Afro. We were two lovers, mismatched and careless in the middle of a strange place, drunk from liquor that had no label and from heat that made my reality a blissful haze.