Take Her Man

2. Allow her to cause you and your man to fight.

3. Accuse your man of anything you can’t prove. And if you do, be prepared to act on it.

4. Leave your man alone with her for any reason.

5. Confuse high self-esteem with blindness. Thinking “my man loves me and he won’t cheat” won’t stop this hussy from taking off her clothes in his office.

Note: Trust your man and talk to him openly about your feelings. But don’t nag.

Bloody Mary and the Soap Opera Baby

Sitting in the waiting room at Tasha’s doctor’s office, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. She’d been behind the sliding glass doors for over thirty minutes and I was beginning to worry. Did she get really bad news and break down in the doctor’s arms? Was she too embarrassed to come out to face me and the rest of the cruel world? Positive thinking. Positive thinking, I kept saying to myself, rocking back and forth. The obviously pregnant woman sitting beside me was looking at me like I was crazy. With my new gangsta-girl attitude in tow, I would’ve said something to her for staring, but I couldn’t blame the sister. I felt just as crazy as I must’ve looked.

I stared up at the ceiling, counting the dusty white panels like sheep jumping over my bed to lull me to sleep. I’d spent the past thirty minutes trying to count each square. So far, I was up to seventy-three.

While I didn’t mind hanging around hospitals, thanks to spending many lunch hours sitting in the cafeteria at the NYU Medical Center having lunch with Julian, I hated doctors’ offices. There was something creepy about them. They were so quiet and spotless. Everyone was always smiling and trying to be so damn pleasant, but beneath all of it, I always felt that something evil was looming behind the big, scary doors that separated the offices from the waiting room. Something waiting to reach out and get me. This was because while everyone was smiling outside, thumbing through old-ass copies of Redbook and Mademoiselle in the waiting area, inside you knew some woman was getting the worst news of her life: She was dying, she couldn’t have kids, she had to get her toe removed, the doctor she was in love with was seeing the new intern…It was a pretty scary place if you thought about it.

With all these bad thoughts swirling around in my head, I was about to hyperventilate and pass out in the pregnant lady’s arms when Tasha finally came easing through the door. She was smiling.

“What happened?” I asked, meeting her halfway down the hallway. “What did he say?”

“He said…” She paused. “He said I’m a good candidate for in vitro! I just need to get Lionel in here.” I nearly picked Tasha up off the floor. We held each other as we danced around the hallway, crying our eyes out. I was so relieved for her. It’s one thing to get pregnant by accident, but to try to get pregnant and then find out you couldn’t—that had to hurt. But now, all was good.

“I can’t believe it. This is really happening to you,” I said, walking out of the doctor’s office arm-in-arm with Tasha.

“Well, at least I know I can be a mother,” Tasha said. “It’s on Lionel now.”

Tasha looked much better than she had the other night at my apartment. The sun seemed to be sitting in the sky and smiling down on her. She had on a cute pink sundress and sling-back Mary Janes. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she was wearing the diamond earrings Tamia and I gave her for Christmas. She seemed to have the pregnant glow already.

“I’m so excited. I never thought all of this would feel this good,” Tasha went on. “Just imagine”—she looked down at her stomach and rubbed it—“someone’s gonna be living in there in a little while. My baby. Hey, we should celebrate. Let’s go out for cocktails. You know I need to get my last drinks in before I get knocked up. It’s gonna be a loooooong time before I can drink again.”

“Oh, I can’t.” I searched my purse for my keys. We’d driven to the doctor’s office together. Tasha had parked her car at my apartment in case she got bad news at the doctor’s office and couldn’t drive. “I have to go to my parents’ for this dinner thing after I drop you off downtown,” I said.

“Oh, too bad.” Tasha got into the car.

“Actually, you could just come with me.” Tasha would provide a great distraction for my mother. With someone

else there, she wouldn’t be able to get all in my business about Julian. Plus, she loved Tasha.

“That sounds like fun. You know I love kicking it with your mama. Is she making her slamming Bloody Marys?” Tasha asked, laughing. The last time I took her and Tamia to my parents’ house, the three of us had to stay over. We got so drunk sipping on my mother’s Bloody Marys that Tamia and I fell asleep outside on the terrace and Tasha somehow ended up in the penthouse cabana. We still joke about her going missing, saying she had an affair with the pool boy—no, my parents don’t have one.

“You know she’ll make them if we ask her to. Mary Elizabeth loves to entertain,” I said. I pulled into traffic and Tasha called Lionel to tell him she was going with me to my parents’, so she’d probably be a little late getting home.

My phone rang just as Tasha was ending her call with a parade of “I love yous” between her and Lionel. It was a welcome interruption, because I was about to vomit if I had to hear her say “I love you, poopie,” again. I opened the phone, sure it was my mother calling to see if I was still coming. My heart fluttered when I looked at the name on the caller ID: Julian. I turned the phone to Tasha so she could see.

“Answer it,” she said, putting her phone in her purse. “Remember step three. Answer it and just be yourself. Don’t bring up the incident with that girl and if he does, just play it down. Make her look crazy.”

I’d told Tasha all about the Miata run-in as we sat in the waiting room waiting for the doctor to call her in. She’d cursed Miata’s name so many times as I told the story that the nurse got up and personally handed us magazines as if to say, “Shut up.”

“Hello,” I said, turning on my earpiece. There was silence. I looked at the phone again, afraid I’d missed the call.

“Hey, baby,” Julian said.

“Hi, Julian,” I replied, sounding even more awkward than he did.

“I was just having lunch in the cafeteria and I was thinking about you. You know, old times.”

“Really?” I grinned and gave a thumbs-up to Tasha. Step three: “Say You, Say Me” was in full effect. He was reminiscing just as the plan predicted. “We did have some great times there,” I said.