Take Her Man

“Why?” Tamia asked.

“Because the other woman had a plan,” Tasha said. “See, you two don’t experience dealing with chicks like Miata, but I do. I know those girls like the back of my hand. She’s a hustler. She’s a smart hustler who’s hustled your doctor away from you.”

“That’s crazy,” Tamia said. “The girl is going to be a doctor herself. She’ll have her own money. Why would she need to marry a doctor?”

“Girl, what’s better than one doctor? Two! Please, from the moment I laid eyes on that girl I knew she was a ghetto girl on the come up. She’s smart. She’s smart and she had a plan…a plan to take Troy’s man. Trust me. I know all this time she’s been in that hospital, she’s been dragging her thang around Julian, looking all sweet and smart, going over medical stuff out loud like a damn dictionary. Black men love that stuff. Especially the ones who know what in the hell she’s talking about. She’s probably being everything Troy isn’t.”

“What are you saying about me?”

“I’m not saying you’re dumb, sweetie;” she said with a smile, “but come on. Julian is your man. He knows the fun you; he doesn’t see you in the classroom playing super lawyer. He doesn’t really get to see on a daily basis how smart you are. Miata knows that and she’s probably been trolling her ass around the hospital, giving him advice about you and making you seem like the most vain, superficial person in her world. She’s been telling Julian her stories about getting out of the ghetto, making herself look like the best thing since sliced bread to your man. I know it. Trust me.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?” I asked.

“No, Troy. This is so unhealthy,” Tamia interrupted.

“Listen to her and you’ll be alone, with her.” Tasha put her hand up in front of Tamia’s mouth and Tamia pushed her away.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked again. To be honest, I thought both of them were right. But I wasn’t ready to give up my man just yet. Like Millie Jackson said in that old song, “Ain’t no

woman in her right mind gonna sit back and let another woman come in and take her man—if he’s really worth having.” Julian was worth having.

“Listen very closely, because I can’t repeat these words and you must do them in this exact order,” Tasha said in her usual theatrical fashion.

“Why can’t you say it again? Is that from The Book of Hoes or something?” Tamia giggled.

“Tamia!” I said, annoyed but equally amused. Tasha was pretty much a card-carrying member of the Former Hoe Club of America. She wasn’t one of those nasty crackhead skeezer hoes or anything. She just had skills and wasn’t afraid to bite and be bitten. It obviously had paid off. She was wearing a six-carat Harry Winston.

“First and foremost, I have to repeat one thing: In order to get him back, you have to be sure he really loves you and not her. Before you begin the plan, you need to really think about that, Troy. Like tonight, I want you to go over the entire situation in your head. You must be sure that he loves you and be sure that he’s worth it. If you answer no to either one of those questions, there’s no need to try to break her spell over him. All you need to do if you even suspect that he loves her over you is move on with your life. Okay?” I nodded my head at Tasha’s request. “Okay,” she went on, “once you’re sure his heart is with you, you start the ‘Take Her Man Plan.’”

“Where does she come up with this stuff?” Tamia laughed.

Tasha growled at Tamia again and then she went right into the plan to help me get Julian back from Miata. She explained that from that point on, I had to think of Julian as “Miata’s man” because that was how Miata stole him from me in the first place. She was the new, fresh thing in Julian’s life. She was the greener grass when I was the old nagging hay. Now the tables had to be turned. I was now single and I actually had the green-grass allure. I just had to use it to my advantage. Making him “her man” essentially made me the new, fresh thing in his life.

After she explained the whole role-reversal scenario, Tasha went into the actual plan, which she claimed she got from some white girl in her apartment building. Over coffee in the lobby, the white girl said the six-point plan apparently was something many women had been using for years. She told Tasha that there was a rumor that the plan was actually how Diddy’s baby mama got him back from that J. Lo and her big booty. Now that’s results.

“Step one,” Tasha said, jumping into the steps. She ran down the first few quickly, stopping along the way only when Tamia protested for some reason or another.

“You mean be a helpless little girl?” Tamia said, rolling her eyes when Tasha made her way to one of the points—The Damsel in Distress.

“No, not helpless, but worthy of rescue,” Tasha said, defending the point.

“Are you kidding me? You want her to be a ‘damsel in distress’? That’s silly. It’s 2007; that’s the kind of crap that brings women back like one hundred years as a sex.”

“Oh, Tamia, please. Don’t act like you don’t turn on that girlie stuff when you need something from a man…smiling all sweet. You’re no damn Angela Davis yourself.”

We all started laughing. I couldn’t tell if it was because Tasha was completely right about Tamia or that we were surprised that Tasha knew who in the hell Angela Davis was. I guess she did read those books in college.

“No, Tasha’s right,” I said. “I read in this magazine once that all men have this superman complex or ego thing that makes them feel a need to be needed by people—like a superhero or something. It said when they’re not being used, they feel useless and find someone who will use them or make them feel needed.”

“And how are you supposed to do that if you really don’t need them to do anything? Why should you pretend you can’t?” Tamia asked, still annoyed.

“Well, for me and Lionel it’s simple,” Tasha said. “I let him do all the crap I don’t want to do around the house. It’s his job to make sure the cars are working and fix stuff when it breaks. I make him take the garbage out and when we get in the car, I make him drive—even though I say where we’re going.” She smiled. “I’m saying, those are things I don’t want to do.”

“I just think it’s too late in the game to go giving my power away like that,” Tamia said. “I have a problem when someone expects me to do something…like cook and clean and care for children. Then they have the power.”

“It’s not about power, Tamia,” I said. “It’s about sharing your life and admitting that you don’t have to do it all alone. The days of the strong black woman carrying it all on her back are way done and over. I say, if you can find a strong man willing to carry his weight, you should let him. Loosen up your own load. I wish I had someone to take my garbage out.”

“Exactly, Troy,” Tasha said, continuing with the rest of the plan. I sat still in my seat listening as it all came together like a puzzle in my mind—the change, the makeover, the sweet smile I had to give to get my man back from that woman’s lure. It was such an elaborate scheme—a wicked plot of reversal of fortune that made so much sense I wondered why the three of us hadn’t come up with it on our own a few heartbreaks ago.