Should Have Known Better

I felt like I was in limbo. Struggling through my past and worrying about my future. Like I was standing on a tightrope and going in any direction meant I would fall all the way down.

I clicked through the channels feeling like something was coming to me, but I have to tell you I had no idea what it was, as obvious as it was.

“Hey, that’s Aunt Sasha,” R. J. said, peeking over at the television from the dining room. “Right, Mama?”

I think my heart saw her before I did, because it was pounding and ringing so loud in my ears I hardly heard Cheyenne answer for me or what he said next.

“Did you say your daddy’s with her?” my mother asked, adding meaning to the mumbling I’d heard.

I was fixated, stuck and frozen on Sasha’s face on the screen. That same blond hair. Those eyes. She was smiling. Laughing. She held up her hand to say something to a man sitting in the interview seat beside her and I saw her freshly manicured hands.

We were all silent. And right then I knew what my kids knew. I knew I was hiding nothing. They knew everything.

“I have to go,” I said, getting up from the couch.

“Go? Where are you going? It’s dark outside,” my mother said, her eyes digging into me to say so much she couldn’t in front of R. J. and Cheyenne.

“Just a little errand,” I said loudly and smiled. “I’ll be back. Can you watch the kids?”

I went to get my purse from the table and my mother was right behind me.

“What are you doing?” she whispered sternly. “I told you not to go out there and do anything stupid. You need to wait here and pray for direction. Not run out in the street and get yourself arrested.”

“I did pray,” I lied. “And I got a response. I know exactly what I need to do.” I looked at the television. Sasha’s show was going off in thirty minutes. I could be downtown to CNN in fifteen.

“Mama, is everything OK?” R. J. asked.

“Everything is fine,” I said, stepping back from my mother. “You just stay here with your grandmother. I’ll be right back.”

Apparently, CNN is a big building with lots of big security guards. But I’ve been a woman long enough to know how to get around big buildings and big guards. Let me rephrase that. I’ve never had to sneak around a building that size or lie to security guards whose hands were as big as my head, but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re full of fury and know that in the South, you can get just about anything if you say the right things to the right people. I smiled and told those guards they must be tired from working all day. I didn’t want to be any trouble. I was Sasha’s sorority sister visiting from Augusta. I wanted to surprise her. I even showed pictures of her that R. J. had taken with my digital camera.

They all seemed a little suspicious. But I pointed out that the pictures had been taken just days before. Clearly, we were friends if she was serving my son pancakes. Everything was fine. They loosened up a little and one copied my driver’s license after I begged him not to call Sasha and ruin my surprise. Another walked me to her dressing room and said he could get fired if I was anything but legit. I assured him everything was fine in my most pleasant voice and kept him distracted with a tale about Sasha’s fondness for big, black, bald men.

“You sure?” he said, rubbing his bald head as he let me into the locked room.

“Sure? I know. That’s all she used to date.”

“So, I stand a chance?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

He laughed and grinned as if he was imagining Sasha on his arm.

“OK, well you just stay in here, little lady, and wait for her!” he said.

“And that’s what I plan to do,” I said. “Thank you.”

I closed the door behind him and exhaled heavily, not realizing I’d been holding my breath since I’d walked into the building.

I took a few deep breaths and steadied myself as I tried to remember why I was there and what I wanted to say to Sasha. My mother was right. The flames of my anger were fanning so high, I knew I might lose control if I wasn’t clear about what I was supposed to do. I didn’t have any questions, because I didn’t expect any answers. I was coming to the conclusion that everything Sasha had ever said to me was a lie. And I was wondering what lies she’d told that I hadn’t discovered yet. I just wanted her to know how trifling she was. Laying up in my house and lying to me. Taking my children’s father away from them in the middle of the night like a thief. I wanted to look her in the face and let her know I wasn’t a fast loser. I could fight. I would fight.

There were candles and flowers and lipsticks and makeup brushes scattered everywhere in the room. An open closet full of new suits and a huge box of designer shoes. A monitor over a little couch beside her makeup table showed Sasha was still on the screen.

I stood up beside the door for a few minutes watching her. Then I sat down. But then my legs were growing so jumpy with my nerves that I had to get back up. I paced the floor. I jumped at each voice I heard from someone walking down the hall, worried that it was her assistant or a makeup artist or just someone other than Sasha coming to discover me in the dressing room.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My brown face. No makeup. No lipstick. Just my tired eyes, still puffy from this morning. I leaned over the vanity, closer to the mirror. My eyes were starting to look like my mother’s. Losing the bit of shine they had left. I wondered who this woman was staring at me in the mirror. Dawn? Sneaking into the CNN building and posting up in the dressing room of the woman who was obviously having an affair with

her husband? Was that me? It couldn’t be. Nothing in my plan ever suggested this. I wasn’t some angry black woman going out into the world to fight. I had children. I had a home. I had to be better than this.