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Never Been to Me Page 2


  “Prepare for landing,” the pilot said as the flight attendant swapped the lukewarm towel from Persi’s tray and left a buttermint with the airline insignia.

  As the plane taxied to a stop at a Dulles International Airport gate, Brad helped Persi get her carry-on bag full of bikinis and cover-ups from the overhead compartment.

  “It’s late, ‘they’ won’t be meeting me. I can take you home,” he said into her ear.

  They, she thought wryly. “We can never be too careful, can we?” she said with an edge to her voice.

  “Let me see you home.”

  “I have my car and you’re practically home.”

  “Then tomorrow.”

  Just as the flight attendant threw open the plane’s front door, Persi looked up into his mournful, honey-sage eyes and said, “Bye.”

  She sauntered down the enclosed corridor into the open space. Then she saw them, the wife’s view obstructed by the head of the sleepy little girl she held, as the other two waited anxiously, looking past everyone not their father. Persi passed by them like she was on a Paris runway, making no eye contact. She couldn’t acknowledge them because then she’d have to acknowledge to herself what she was doing. She wasn’t ready for that.

  Almost to the shuttle, she heard a loud chorus of “Daddy!”

  Tears of regret and torment accompanied her as she walked to her car. Why was she doing this? It wasn’t worth it... not the toll it took on her and her sense of self.

  She sat in the car, wiped away angry, cold tears and breathed a few times to relax before she fished for the ticket and money to get out of the lot. “Home,” she directed her sporty Audi as she cruised the beltway before venturing onto the streets of D.C. Quiet, somber, sober streets coated with a thin veil of either sleet or drizzle. “No matter where you roam, there is no place like home,” she thought of her mother’s words every time they pulled into the driveway when they were children. That stuck better than “home again, home again, jiggy jig.”

  Persi chuckled. She hadn’t followed the predicable path to home ownership that four generations of native Washingtonians dictated. Her great-grandparents had begun on U Street N.W. Not the famed U Street of the Booker T. or Republic Theaters; not “historical U Street” of black celebrity where its regal members appeared on the silver screen for their segregated enjoyment. Not the U Street that halted at the Negro nexus of Northwest where four corners of 1940s black D.C., give or take a block, converged; north to south, Seventh Street became Georgia Avenue and, east to west, the infamous U Street turned into Florida Avenue. But the quiet, residential section of U Street reached by taking a sweet left off of Florida Avenue onto Second across Rhode Island Avenue then a right at St. George’s Episcopal Church and stretched up to North Capitol Street. Her great-grands had a row house on the left side and Persi recalled how she loved the high ceilings, fireplaces in every room, and the backstairs to the kitchen. She savored the Sunday meals after church there, and all the holidays; eavesdropping on all the antics of the folks who populated their family. Her grandparents, the second generation, moved from Shaw-LeDroit Park to upper northwest in the second alphabet and been “blockbusters” in the early fifties despite the clandestine and illegal covenants to initially keep Negroes out of the white neighborhoods. Two years before Brown vs. the Board of Education, prior to the Gold Coast across Sixteenth Street opening up—and when it did, her grandparents and a few other pioneers refused to move the few arbitrary blocks to the “other side.” Persi’s parents, then three, predictably moved into the third alphabet—the flowers and trees of Shepherd Park; geranium, holly, iris, and juniper where the Sinclairs lived with their three daughters. Persi’s oldest sister, Diana April, escaped to Oberlin College, never returned to D.C., and now lived in Boston with her partner. Her younger sister, Athena June, and her family upheld tradition and moved across Sixteenth to the Platinum Coast of North Portal Estates into more trees at Spruce and Sycamore. By then the black bourgeoise’s prosperity outgrew the confines of upper northwest and pushed right up against Maryland into the county of Montgomery. The acceptable excess of upper-crust D.C. flowed over the Maryland line into Silver Spring, Bethesda, and Potomac. Persi May was supposed to buy her house there and had a lovely, all brick, split foyer with a long driveway picked out until Doxie told her that “her house” was for sale.

  Since she’d been a child, Persi had loved her house, an all-brick, Second Empire style, Romanesque revival on Logan Circle built in the 1880s. While Diana favored the Seth Phelps house on the corner of Thirteenth Street with the big magnolia for a front yard, Persi preferred the white, four-story Victorian with the mansard roof and Peter Pan dormers. After purchase the high Victorian Gothic stood uninhabitable, forcing Persi to replace the roof, close the fireplaces, install zone heating and air conditioning and address a drainage problem before she moved in. Living in one area, she painstakingly renovated her house, room by room; laying on her back, meticulously hand-painting the medallion around the dining room chandelier and refurbishing the gleam to the original hardwood floors. She’d spent her nights, weekends, and evenings and after sixteen months, like D.C. itself, it was a showpiece. But it was home to her.

  Staunch neighborhood purists objected to her conversion of the side yard into a semicircular drive, but with no street parking and the issue of her personal safety, she remained undaunted. This successful modification inadvertently launched a landscape-design business while still a primary researcher at NIH. As the principal landscape company for four architectural firms and freelancing jobs around the metro area, she worked this second job only on weekends and summer evenings. After two years, her landscaping-design business eclipsed chemistry; she left the latter. During the slow winter months, driven more by need for activity than money, she consulted on research teams at NIH, wrote proposals, received grants, accepted speaking engagements in the field of stem cell research and testified at congressional hearings as an expert. She had two jobs; one brand new and the other she’d always felt she’d been in by default. Neither held a candle to her dream career: a perfumer. She’d always concocted her own perfumes in junior high and high school and even today, no matter where she traveled, always visited the botanical grounds expanding her repertoire of aromatic fragrances, preparing for a time when she hoped to use it. The words of George Eliot echoed in her ear, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

  Into this welcomed chaotic mix and convergence of all things possible entered Brad Shelton. At thirty years old, everything she ever wanted was coming to fruition; even a guy she had a crush on in high school who was once out of her league, was now eating out of the palm of her hand.

  Persi pulled into her side-yard driveway, cut her engine, and climbed to her front door. Home, she thought. The perfect journey; glad to go and glad to come back. She cut off her alarm, unlocked and entered her tiled vestibule before opening her front door. Timers clicked on and off, illuminating various areas of her house and she glanced at the living room and the dining room as she walked her hallway to the kitchen.

  A sign Welcome Home, Aunt Persi, was propped up on the black granite island in the middle of the kitchen against the basket of mail.

  Persi chuckled and looked at the plants that Drew cared for in her absence. She is such a good kid, Persi thought, as she ignored the mound of mail, closed her pantry door, and headed up the backstairs to her bedroom. I suppose if I’m good, one day I’ll get a Drew or two, she thought, pulling off her blouse and turning up the thermostat. The phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  Persi closed her eyes against the sound of the familiar voice.

  “I just called to see if you got home all right,” Brad inquired just above a whisper.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Bruce. We’ll figure all this out. You know I love you.”

  “So you say.”

  “I’ve got something really special planned for your birthday. We’ll eat at our lit
tle place in Alexandria, drive around the monuments—I know how you like them lit up at night—and spend the rest of the evening at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel. How’s that sound?”

  Persi opened her mouth to speak—

  “Somebody’s coming. Gotta go. Call you tomorrow.”

  Click.

  Persi stood there with the phone in her hand. The dial tone blared, she hung up.

  How could someone who brings you such joy, bring you such pain? she thought with a heavy sigh. She drew her blinds and drapes, walked into her closet, and pulled out a nightgown from the built-in drawers. She cut on the shower faucet, ran the water to the desired temperature, shed the rest of her clothes where she stood, and stepped into the stream of wet, hoping it would wash the travel grime and her adulterous sins away. She loved him and hated herself for loving him. She was a good person. An accomplished and well-respected professional. A great friend, law-abiding citizen, good-hearted... she had one flaw. No human being was perfect. When she got to the Pearly Gates would God absolve her of this one thing? Forgive her for knowingly coveting another woman’s man?

  Hell no, she thought. In all the annals of the Bible, she knew adultery was a biggie. The mother of all mothers. She knew her own mother rolled over in her grave every time her daughter rolled in the sheets with Brad Shelton. In all the years her parents were married, she’d never heard anything about outside people. Her daddy mowed the lawn on Saturdays, wheeled his girls to dance or piano lessons, and her parents went out together on Saturday nights—to the movies, a friend’s house, and once a month to fraternity or sorority or social club meetings. On Sundays they’d go to church as a family and as they grew, their father slept in, but always had breakfast ready for them upon their return. She knew her father hailed from a different time, but she wondered how a married man got out on a Saturday. Day or night? But once Brad slid his hand up the small of her back, sending shivers in places she’d forgotten about, she didn’t wonder anymore. Once he took her chin in his hands, pressed those fabulous lips on hers and parted them with his tongue . . . she didn’t wonder or even care anymore. She was single, he was married—it wasn’t her problem that his wife couldn’t keep him home. Once he pressed that hard, gorgeous body of his against hers . . . there was only him in her world—no one else mattered but the two of them. She had never felt such complete joy as he escorted her to a never-land of carnal pleasures and everything she thought’d she missed in high school, she was getting with him. No other man had ever made her feel that way.

  Early on, Persi thought it cute when he checked in with his wife and she’d tell him to bring bread on his way home. Persi would climb on top of him, nuzzle, kiss and flick her tongue in his ear to distract him.

  Early on, she liked to listen to him say “Love you too,” and thought that his wife was so dumb because she, Persi Sinclair, had him right were she wanted him: under her. They made love after love. Early on, Persi believed him when he told her that he and his wife had an understanding, that she wasn’t sensitive to his needs like Persi was. That they had an arrangement and he never slept with her anymore.

  Early on, she believed him when he said, “You are number one and I love you and only you.” That he loved his wife because she was the mother of his children, but he was in love with Persi. Persi believed him when he declared Brainstorm’s “This Must Be Heaven,” as their song and he couldn’t live without her in his world. She believed him when he said, “If only I had noticed you in high school things would have been so different. You’d have my children now.” She believed him when he proclaimed that “they would be together eventually, it’ll just take a little time.”

  And then she, the wife, became pregnant.

  That should have been Persi’s first clue.

  Like when Doxie asked, “How do you know when a man’s lying?”

  “How?”

  “His lips are moving.”

  But his wife couldn’t give him what he wanted—a boy. It was another girl. Persi knew she’d give him a boy . . . after they were married. She did have her standards and a reputation to maintain. So Persi’s heart overrode her logical mind and they continued this relationship in secrecy.

  Persi stepped from the shower and wrapped her brown body in a thirsty aubergine towel. All that was years ago. She’d justified the hell out of her sordid behavior. What was her excuse now? What could she tell herself now and believe?

  She slipped on the nightgown and felt the silk tumble across her clean skin. She opened the drapes of one window, climbed into bed, and cut off her light. She watched the waning moon’s illumination paint the blinds’ symmetrical pattern on her rug. How did I get here? she asked as she prayed for sleep to come. A fire truck blazed by, siren careening, and the flash of lights momentarily lit up her room like twelve o’clock noon. She missed the island’s peace, as she tried to ignore that for ten days Brad had been satisfying and lying next to her each and every night and sometimes twice during the day. Now the night called out his name, but she was alone. He lays next to his wife, she thought. From heaven to hell in a matter of hours.

  She began deep yoga breathing, her body relaxed and finally, she fell asleep. It was the only freedom she knew.

  CHAPTER 3

  Persi jolted awake from the sound of the bell at her front door. Initially she was disoriented, wondering why she was not in a thatched-roof hut in the South Pacific. She grabbed a robe, descended the stairs, opened the front door onto her vestibule and then the outside door, where a delivery man was hidden by an abundance of exotic, tropical flowers.

  “Oh, my!” Persi exclaimed as she took the clipboard from his hands, signed for the flowers, and then accepted the floral bundle. “If you wait, I’ll get you—”

  “That’s okay, ma’am. Enjoy.”

  “Aunt Persi!” Drew ran up the steps, passing the delivery man and followed by her mother.

  “Hey girl,” Persi turned in time to absorb her full body hug.

  “I missed you, Aunt Persi,” Drew said, wrapping her arms around Persi’s waist. “Mom made me go to a fashion show. Don’t ever go away again. Unless you take me with you.”

  “That ought to be a hoot. The three of you,” Doxie said sardonically, referring to Persi, Brad and Drew as she entered the house. “Nice flowers,” she said sarcastically. “What’s it been, ten hours? He really can’t do without you, huh?”

  “Who?” Drew asked.

  “Uh! Grown folks’ conversation, young lady,” Doxie admonished her precocious daughter. “Can’t hear when I tell you to clean your room, but you’re all up in this.”

  “Hey,” Persi said to Doxie as they shared an air kiss between them.

  “Aunt Persi, did you see how I did your mail and watered your plants?” Drew asked proudly.

  “Good job!” Persi slapped five with the ten-year-old girl. “I owe you for a job well done, don’t I?”

  “Only if you think I deserve it.”

  “Who is this and what have you done with Drew?” Persi asked playfully of Doxie.

  “Oh, Aunt Persi,” she laughed with a blush.

  “Go on up stairs and get my purse. And there are a few souvenirs as well.”

  Drew raced up the backstairs, taking the steps by twos.

  “There are no condoms, in that purse are there?” Doxie asked.

  Persi smirked at her old friend.

  “But condoms were used, right?” Doxie pressed.

  “Negro, please. I love me.”

  “Are you sure?” Doxie rolled her eyes.

  “Oh! Aunt Persi, can I look at TV up here?”

  “Yes!”

  “Thank you!”

  “Good kid,” Persi said as she fluffed and sniffed the flowers.

  “Takes after her mama.” Doxie eyed her friend and asked, “Good trip?”

  “It was.” Persi blushed.

  “Humph,” Doxie commented disdainfully and asked, “Are we going or not?”

  “Okay. Let me shower.”


  Persi went upstairs and picked out jeans and a Howard U. sweatshirt, relishing being back home with folks whose love and motives she never questioned. She’d known Doxie Fitzhugh since the third grade when they’d been joined together by their unusual names. In the fourth grade, they’d postulated that girls with names never shared by anyone else in the world were special, and by the sixth grade, they expanded to become the Fab Four by teaming up with Viviana Hamilton and Nola Rogers. They all transferred to Roosevelt High School in the science pilot program a year ahead of their other classmates, further distinguishing their names to Doxie, the doctor’s daughter, Persi-Sin, ViVi-Ham, and Nola-Ro. While others referred to them, not always in a positive light, as the “smart girls” or “brainiacs,” privately they called themselves the PVs—professional virgins. Even though they were invited to all the parties and dated, boyfriends didn’t last long because they had “too much self-esteem” and reps for not “givin’ up nothin,’” having vowed to each other not to just offer their womanly treasure to any old boy.

  Only one boy breeched and was admitted to the Fab Four. Desmond “Desi” Fairchild became the plus one”in the tenth grade when his father, the ambassador from Jamaica, moved to D.C. with his family. Desi’s test scores and intelligence gained him entry into the science program but his Hershey-chocolate good looks, charm, humor, and dancing ability got him accepted by everyone. Being naturally brilliant and not pretentious, a dufus or boring like other boys in their orbit, Desi-Fair provided a welcomed comic relief in all the Fab Four plus one AP classes. Even though he lived on Colorado Avenue, one block down from Doxie and across from the Carter Baron Amphitheater, he was absolutely, wildly crazy for “Persi-girl” as he called her. Persi missed the attention when he disappeared to Jamaica for the summers and always anticipated his return with great relish, but she didn’t want to lose their friendship for a romantic entanglement. Being platonic friends lasted longer than her four-week boyfriends ever had.