Should Have Known Better

“Please, I stay in so many hotels for work, I have to try to make my own space. And when that doesn’t work”—she paused and held up the expensive-looking bottle of wine—“I drink.” She got up and gathered a glass and bottle opener from the nightstand.

“Oh, it can’t be that bad, Ms. CNN. You’re a household name. Everyone knows who you are. And it must look great in your bank account.”

“Yeah, I worked for all of that. I sacrificed a lot,” she said, opening the bottle. “News is hard on you and being a black woman in the business is even worse.”

“How so?” I sat down on the bed.

“People just expect you to be a hard-nosed bitch. So you try not to be. And then they run over you, and then you have to be a crazy bitch just to get what you want. Anderson Cooper says he wants a certain shot, he gets it. I say I want a shot, they ask my producer. I say, fuck the producer. He wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for me.”

“But there are way more black people working in television . . . at least more than there were when we were growing up. What about A. J. Holmes? I love that brother’s work. He can’t be like all of the other good old boys,” I said, bringing up a black reporter who did special segments on CNN. He was probably one of the most handsome men on television. He looked more like a model than a news reporter. I snuck to watch him in the bedroom on Sunday mornings when Reginald was in the living room watching football.

“He’s actually pretty cool,” Sasha said. “Fine as all get-out.”

“Don’t I know!”

“But he’s still one of the boys. And when it comes down to it, he’ll side with them.”

She poured a glass of wine and tried to hand it to me.

“Oh no, I can’t,” I said, feeling the weight of the wine I’d already had at dinner.

“I insist, soror,” she said. “Take a load off!” She held the glass of wine out right in front of my eyes.

I reached for it.

“But what will you drink out of?” I asked. “Let me go into the kitchen and get another glass.”

“No, no,” she said. “I have the bottle.”

Thirty minutes later and the guest room had become a dorm room at Manley Hall. Lying in the bed beside Sasha, my head felt so heavy, but I just couldn’t stop laughing.

“And that girl, you know the dark-skinned pretty one who refused to pledge with us . . . What was her name?” Sasha went on after sharing what I was sure was an embellished tale of a classmate who was caught making out with one of her students behind a high school in Phoenix. It wouldn’t have been so unbelievable had the student not been a girl who the police first thought was a boy. Turns out the girl was on the football team. Now the news was about a classmate who’d just gotten a divorce. “What was her name?”

“Black Barbie?” I answered. “You mean Black Barbie? Marcy’s best friend?”

“Yes . . . Kerry. That was her name. Kerry Jackson.”

“I remember her well. We took biology together over at Morehouse when Spelman didn’t have the class. She was so

pretty. God, it was hard just walking into the classroom behind her,” I said, recalling how it seemed like some kind of R&B music video whenever Kerry was near. Her long, jet black hair, normally parted down the middle, would blow in an invisible breeze that always missed me, and boys would look on and grin like she was a piece of chocolate candy. She never budged though. Never gave them any attention.

“You know she married that fine-ass Alpha frat brother Jamison. Well, apparently he was having an affair with some woman his mother hooked him up with from her church!” Sasha gushed.

“That’s madness,” I said, again thinking Sasha was just talking dramatics. “Impossible. Who would cheat on someone like Kerry? She came from a good family and everything.” I looked over at Sasha. What she didn’t know was that my mother had been Kerry’s mother’s maid for the past fifteen years, and I’d already known about the divorce.

“I know she had a good family,” Sasha said and I could hear the wine in her slurred voice. “And she was pretty to be so dark. You know what I mean?”

“Please, I almost couldn’t pledge because I was darker than the bricks outside of Manley.”

“Anyway,” Sasha said, frowning. “Kerry took Jamison’s trifling ass back and he did it again. Flew out to California and got shacked up with the woman he’d cheated with. Got her pregnant. He was so whipped he almost lost his business.”

“Rake It Up?” I said.

“Yeah, a million-dollar lawn care service she helped build. I wish a Negro would try that with me!”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to hook Reginald up with him,” I said, thinking of Reginald’s sagging business list. The recession had many of his once-loyal clients cutting their own lawns now. He had to go corporate with his list or he’d be shut out. It was my biggest concern. But mentioning corporate to Reginald was like asking him to sell his soul.

“He’s thinking of expanding?”