Take Her Man

“That’s mine too.” I crossed the street in front of him. “Not many people like it like I do. I have been known to eat it for dinner.”

“Dinner?” He laughed.

“Yep.”

“Oh no, in the South, Rocky Road is not a meal option. You need some hog mog, collard greens, pig feet, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes—”

“Dang, you eat all of that?” I broke in.

“You know I do. And I can cook it, too.”

“Oh, a man that can cook,” I said, winking.

“Oh, Kyle Hall is no stranger to the kitchen. My nana made sure of that.” Kyle opened the door to the ice cream parlor for me. “Can you burn?”

“Depends on what you mean by burn.” I stepped inside. “I can burn food. In fact, I think I’ve burned just about everything I’ve cooked.” I smiled.

“Well, I guess we’re just going to have to change that. I can teach you a few things. But it’ll cost you.”

“Cost me?” I asked.

“Yeah, you’ll have to buy the groceries—especially if you’re going to burn them. Church money don’t grow on trees.”

Halfway through ice cream, Judge Dinkins called and said that Tamia had finally woken up. She was still a little out of it, but she was doing just fine. He said the visiting hours were over and that we should come to the hospital first thing in the morning. I thanked him for calling and told him to kiss her for me and tell her that Ms. Lovesong was waiting to see her. My body settled a little and somehow the ice cream tasted that much sweeter as I licked my cone. Things, as Kyle had promised me, were getting better.

“One down, one to go,” Kyle said, happy to hear Tamia was okay. “We just had to be patient.”

After hearing the good news we decided to take a short walk before we headed back to the hotel. I was even beginning to feel better about what had happened earlier between Tasha and me. Strolling from window to window, Kyle told me a story his grandfather used to tell him when he was child. It was about an old man who was losing his sight.

Kyle said one day the man went to see the town’s healer to see if she could heal him. The old woman gave him some dried herbs and told him to rub them on his eyes each night before bed for five nights in a row. She told him on the first day when he woke up, he’d have some slight burning, and on the second day he’d be able to see everything, then he’d lose his vision totally on the third day and it would return as clear as it was when he was a boy of five on the fourth day. Then she warned the old man to continue using the herbs on the fifth night even though he could see fine on the fourth. She told him that after the fifth day, he’d lose his sight for ten days and then regain it for good on the eleventh.

The man said thank you and left the healer’s house. Then, Kyle said, twenty days later the man returned to the healer. He was walking with a cane and he was totally blind. “What did you do to me, old woman? Your herbs didn’t help me. I could still see when I came here, and now I’m totally blind. Your herbs made me blind.” Without moving from her chair, the old woman asked him if he’d used the herbs each night for five days straight. The man said he’d used it the first night and it burned so bad he hadn’t used it the second night. Then he told her he’d used it the third night and gained his sight by morning. As she’d promised, by the fourth morning he was using it, and his vision was as clear as it was when he was five. Then he said he decided he didn’t want to use it the fifth day, because he didn’t want to lose his vision for ten days. He had to work in the fields. “I could see for nineteen days, and this morning I woke up and I couldn’t see. What can I do?” he asked. “Nothing,” the old woman said. “Nothing can be done. You didn’t respect the her

bs. They will heal you, but only on their time. Not yours.”

After Kyle finished telling the story, he explained that he’d memorized it when he was a little boy and thought of it whenever he was wrestling with something in his mind.

“The point is seeing things through, Troy,” Kyle said. “Whenever you start a journey, you have to see things through. The good and the bad. There will be days when you can’t see, days when your eyes burn, and days when things appear so bright you feel like you’re five years old. But you have to see it through and remember why you started your journey in the first place—why you took the first step,” he added. “The reason I’m telling you this story is that you have to remember why you wanted your friend to see her mother and start from there. Forget about what happened today. You’re not a bad person because your friend had a fight with her mother. You had no way of seeing that coming. Your intentions were good and that’s all that matters. Now all you have to do is figure out how you can make things better. Don’t just give up and walk away because you had a bad day”—he smiled at me and pinched my cheek—“or the herbs will get you.”

Kyle and I returned to the hotel and even though I insisted he stay with me and sleep in the extra room, he got a room of his own for the night. He came up to my room with me to talk and sat in the living room to pray as I went to change into something comfortable.

I peeked through the doors to watch him as I slipped on an old sweat suit I’d packed. Kyle looked so peaceful sitting in the living room on the floor, with the Bible resting in his hands. Watching his lips move as he focused on each word, I imagined he’d read every one of those words before, but he read them with so much love, it looked like they were still new to him.

I still couldn’t believe he’d come all the way here from New York just to see me. Just to help me. I tried to explain to myself that he was just worried, but there had to be more. I would’ve been lying to myself if I didn’t at least admit that. The truth was that I knew Kyle really liked me and I also knew I’d have to find some way to deal with that, but at the moment I was busy enjoying the view.

Kyle actually managed to make prayer look sexy. I probably shouldn’t have been watching him—that had to be some kind of sin…coveting thy preacher or something. But, damn, he looked good in that kind of Denzel meditating in Mo’ Better Blues kind of way. Denzel’s fine ass was sitting there meditating as the sun came up. He looked like an African king. Made me just want to tame him.

“You done watching me?” Kyle asked. He looked up from his Bible and smiled at me behind him in the room. I didn’t realize how obvious I was.

“Sure,” I said, embarrassed. Suddenly I wished the fire alarm in the building would go off or something.

“So are you feeling better?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s good,” Kyle said, sitting on the couch. “So tell me about your friends. What are they like?”

“Well, Tamia is the smart and silly one.” I sat down next to him. “She’s just full of life. Always wants to get something more. Always working hard. And I guess you could say Tasha is the fiery one. She’s the one who will burn you up if you don’t act right. She’s really strong, but sometimes I don’t think she knows it.”