I nodded yes as I wiped tears from my cheeks, forcing a chuckle. Marcy was right. Jamison adored me and treated me like the best pearl. I waited for a long time for him to come into my life. But when he arrived, it was like he’d been there all along and I hadn’t waited a day, because my life was finally beginning.
Barbie Meets Ken
February 1995
The day after my debutante ball, my mother made it clear that in her eyes, it was time for me to begin the search for a suitable mate. My father was her escort to her debutante ball, and while she was only fifteen, she claimed she knew he was to be her husband and planned the rest of her life accordingly. My father was from a long line of military men, beginning with my great-great grandfather who fought with the Louisiana Native Guards in the Union Army’s first regiment of black soldiers in the Civil War. Dad had gone to college, as my grandmother made him promise, but after that, it was off to the Army. Love-struck, my mother prepared herself to be an army wife, ready to travel by his side and face the possibility of being a stay-at-home wife if it was clear he needed her there for support—which she did, even though she had a B.A. in Music and graduated at the top of her class.
Her goal was for me to do the same. But because it was clear that none of the “play dates” she’d arranged for me were working, she’d resolved that my match would be made in college. “A Spelman and Morehouse wedding!” I remember hearing her say time and again after asking had I met so-and-so’s son from her church on campus yet, or had I called a Morehouse boy’s number that she’d slipped into a care package. The worst part was her visits. Then she’d manage to finagle some senator’s son or judge’s nephew to escort us to lunch as she painfully gave him reasons to like me. “Well, my Kerry speaks French,” she’d say if he was a French major. “Well, my Kerry eats ice cream,” she’d say if he ordered the banana split for dessert. My mother’s efforts were well organized and I felt so bad that they never worked out, because I was tired of being single, but things just never seemed to fit between me and the fellows who came knocking on my door after they survived her inquisition.
Either they’d be too stuck-up and highbrow or they’d turn out to be be classless or completely barbaric. And some were just a mixture of both. My first year, through one of my mother’s sorority connections, I ended up on a date with Preston Allcott. He was a third-year at Morehouse, who’d already taken the MCAT and was no doubt on his way to Morehouse Medical School, where both his father and uncle had received their M.D.s. Preston was a beautiful thing to look at. He had chiseled, Grecian features, smooth olive skin, and piercing blue eyes you would swear he stole from a white man. I was a bit excited to be going on a date with a junior when Preston picked me up in his BMW. All the men picked up their dates in front of the big iron gates at Spelman, where everyone could see who was getting into what car—it was quite a “who’s who” parade of door opening. And when Preston pulled up in his car and opened the door for me, I distinctly remembered hearing someone say, “There’s Black Barbie’s Ken!” But a “Ken” Preston was not. He was crass and mean to everyone we came in contact with. He told the waitress at the restaurant that she needed to go back to “waitress school” to learn how to serve food (she had reached over his arm) and refused to tip her.
I was stunned. But that wasn’t it. After laughing about the incident in the car (with himself), Preston decided to “advise” me about how to date a man like him. “You need to let me call you,” he said with not one hint of irony in his voice. “And don’t ever ask me when I’ll call, or miss my call. I’m a busy man and I can’t be expected to hold a routine with a woman or be left waiting.” I was laughing inside. I knew his kind too well. He wanted his cake . . . he wanted to eat it too. “And please don’t ever ask me what I’m doing on this night or the other. I don’t tolerate that. My business is my business and it’ll always be that way.” I couldn?
?t get back to my room fast enough. And while the car was still shiny, Preston was looking mighty dull. By the time we stopped in front of the school, I was completely ignoring him. “But I do like you,” he said. “I could see myself marrying you. You come from good people and while you’re a little dark for my taste, you have nice features and we can make a beautiful baby.” He ran his hand down my cheek. I wanted to vomit. “Now, the only thing we will need to do to seal the deal is sample the goods.” “Sample?” I asked. “Yeah, we have to have sex, so I know if it’s good.” I was flabbergasted. Not only was I a seventeen-year-old virgin, but that kind of speech was never used by any of the other duds I’d been out with. He then reached over the middle console and dug his little pasty hand so far down into my crotch that I swear he scratched the seat beneath me. I got out of that car so fast I had no time to curse him out. I was afraid he’d come after me to “seal the deal.”
Over the next years, it was pretty much the same thing. Shiny cars. Dull men. I wasn’t matching up with anyone, and while I was sure I didn’t want to settle for just anyone—I was never at a loss for offers—I was getting a bit scared. It seemed like everyone was hooking up and Spelman and Morehouse wedding bells were floating in the air everywhere I turned. Some girls had even hooked up with those fine, rugged men at Clark, and the brothers at Morris Brown had planted a few rings on excited fingers. But I was a dead woman walking . . . the perfect Spelman woman living a perfectly solo life.
When the annual Valentine’s dance came around my senior year, I’d put together a strategic plan to ensure optimal success—I was staying locked up in the apartment I was sharing with Marcy. My date would be a bucket of ice cream and my big dance would be to the music of the commercials on television. But, as usual, Marcy wouldn’t have it. I was rolled up in bed, happy and content with my solitude, and in she came completely overdressed in a red satin gown and diamond earrings that couldn’t possibly be real. Marcy was from a middle-class family in New York. Her mother was a former hairdresser who now owned two shops and her father managed a limousine service. When Marcy arrived at Spelman, she knew little of the Southern way of things. She was New York flashy and usually New York loud. But she had a great sense of style and could make anyone laugh. That was why I liked her so much. She wasn’t like most of the girls I’d grown up with. She put on no airs and had no rules. Most of the girls I went to prep school with were what I called pretenders—the Southern lady way of being mean meant you were sweet and kind on the outside, but evil and envious on the inside. Not Marcy. She was very forward with her feelings and if she didn’t like someone, they knew it fast. While this caused her to stumble a bit when it came time to fit in with the rest of the women on campus, Marcy’s humor and style (as it toned down) eventually led to her falling into favor with most of the girls and she’d grown into the true social butterfly of our twosome since we’d met freshmen year. Marcy knew everyone on campus and seemed to know everyone’s business. If it was important, Marcy knew it, and if it wasn’t, she knew it too. Often her gossiping led to bumps in our relationship, specifically when the gossip was about me, but we always worked through it and she was my biggest supporter. After begging me to go with her to the Valentine’s dance so Damien (who she’d later marry) wouldn’t think she was only going to the dance to see him, she literally dragged me out of bed and forced me into a black dress my mother had dropped off for the dance the day before.
“I’m only going because you’re begging me,” I said lazily. I fully intended to sit in that bed all night with my ice cream and television. “I won’t have any fun, and I’ll end up sitting alone looking stupid.”
“Kerry, please. You know those brothers can never get enough of you. You just act so funny they’re afraid to ask you to dance. They think you’re stuck-up.”
“Well, I am stuck-up,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t be a repeat of all of the other dances where men would ask me to dance and then take me back to my seat when it was clear I wasn’t about to let them gyrate on my backside.
“I guess you have a point. You can be a little stuck-up,” Marcy said. “But if you’re ever going to meet the right man, you’re going to have to unstick yourself. So, he can stick you.” She forced her left index finger through a tight hole she created with her other hand to symbolize my virginity. Marcy always said that because I was waiting to save myself for Mr. Right, she was sure I’d lose my mind the minute I finally lost my virginity.
“Whatever,” I said, laughing. “I’ll go with you to the dance, but if some pervert tries to grope me, he’s going to get my ‘go to hell’ stare.”
We both stopped and gave each other the icy, top-to-bottom stare we gave to random men who’d found themselves wandering around campus in search of female company. When they’d start moseying in our direction, we’d pause, step back, and give them the “go to hell” stare. It was a guaranteed deterrent.
Those college dances were all the same. Ill-placed balloons and unfortunate streamers combined with poor lighting and cheap refreshments. One year I was actually served nacho chips. Better still, it seemed as if no one even wanted to be there. The dejected or distracted professors and administrators either looked sad that it was no longer their turn to be on the dance floor, or as if they’d rather stayed locked up in their offices to drink whiskey and remember days gone by. And the students looked anxious at first, but as soon as they realized the DJ wasn’t going to be allowed to play any of the nasty, sexually explicit music they were used to hearing on the radio and no strippers were going to come shooting out of the ceiling, they seemed to wish they were old enough to go to a real club and ditch this glorified high school scene altogether—which the older ones usually did.
For these reasons, the balloon-and-streamer dance became more of a who’s who at Spelman College competition than a dance. While there were a few couples and soon-to-be couples on the dance floor at the beginning of the night, most of the attention was on who was walking into the room with what date and what they were wearing. At the top of this list were the Greeks and rich kids. While I never felt a desire to pledge (as a legacy of pink and green, this was against my mother’s best wishes, of course), I fell into the latter category, and every time I entered a campus function, it was as if the Red Sea was dividing in the form of tasteless red, chiffon dresses and crimson sequin gowns as people pretended not to stare, but couldn’t help but whisper to their neighbors that once again, Black Barbie was alone.
As Marcy and I struggled up the steps in our heels and shared a few fake, forced hellos with her sorority sisters who were outside posing on the front steps as they awaited their grand entrance, I prayed things would be different this year. I hadn’t shared it with Marcy, but part of the reason I hadn’t wanted to go was because of all of the pressure I felt at the dances. It was OK . . . even easy . . . for me to put on my perfect exterior around campus and at other functions where a date wasn’t necessarily required. There I was the Kerry they all expected. I was together and full of smiles. But at the dances they expected more from a senior who’d had years to find at the very least a handsome escort. And while people still spoke to me and smiled with envy heavy in their eyes as they admired my new dress, I knew inside they were wondering where my Morehouse man was and what was wrong with me that I didn’t have one yet. What Halle couldn’t do. What Oprah couldn’t do. What Kerry couldn’t do. Keep a man. I didn’t want to have to face those accusations in their eyes again.
When the French doors swung open as dramatically as Marcy’s gold gloves had pushed them, I saw that my mother’s Methodist God had answered my silent prayers in his normal low-key fashion. People were everywhere. Laughing and talking, chatting and dancing. The room was so packed it looked as if we’d sneaked off to one of those loud nightclubs off campus. It wasn’t even a dance; it was a real party. There were no streamers or balloons and no one seemed to notice me.
“I know Damien is in here somewhere already,” Marcy screamed in my ear over the music. “Let
’s find him.” She pulled my hand and we tunneled through the crowd, stopping every once in a while so Marcy could crane her neck to see if she could spot Damien. They’d been dating a few months now and Marcy was determined that he was the man she was going to marry. She’d later prove herself right, but it took a lot to get him there. Damien was what women on campus called “top breed.” The type of man I was sure my mother wanted me to marry; he was rich, from a prestigious family, had been educated in Europe, handsome, and Greek. He was a top pick at Morehouse, and the women at Spelman were competing like track stars at the Olympics for a place in his heart. They were gaining way until Marcy met him at a Greek party. While Marcy was beautiful, her roots made her a little less than what people would expect him to end up with. She had no prestige and a little less polish than the rest of the girls lining up at his door. But this difference served her well, because the lack of polish and prestige was defeated by her blunt style and bold demeanor that kept Damien’s eyes bright and fixed on her, while the other girls must have seemed normal and a bit boring. He was obviously taken with her. But it seemed that when things got serious between them, Damien got nervous. He liked hanging out with Marcy, but marriage was a whole separate issue. His family hadn’t quite accepted the idea of Damien marrying an outsider. They had big society page wedding plans, and Marcy wasn’t . . . society. I knew it hurt her to realize this; she’d broken all of the other barriers on sheer personality, had even pledged a sorority and was accepted wholly, but the guard wouldn’t budge. Didn’t even want to see her. Yet she was in love with Damien and he was in love with her. So, they played this game until finally something gave. She got pregnant a year after graduation. Needless to say, there was a wedding.
“There he is,” Marcy said, pointing toward a small group of men in black suits. She drew me close to her and pulled a tiny compact mirror from her clutch. “Do I look okay?” she asked.
“Yes, lovely. Perfect.”
“Makeup is soft? Not too makeup-y?” She was never worried about being overdone before she’d met Damien, but now everything was toned down.
“Yes.”
“Too makeup-y?” she whined.
“No, I mean it’s fine. Soft and not too much. Just right.”
“Okay.” She stashed the mirror and straightened her dress. “Now, we’re going to walk over there really calm-like and say hello. But let’s not look like we’re going over there, but just kind of end up there. Okay?”
“We?”