Never Been to Me Read online

  As Persi stacked the scrapbook and yearbooks back into the closet, she thought how her younger sister, Athena, got to Howard U, got her man, Bernard, and four children: a boy, twin girls, and another boy. Persi smiled, both happy and envious of her baby sister who’d never worked, had a nanny, housekeeper, and a man who thought life didn’t begin until Athena woke up. He’d looked at her with such love and admiration, and Persi wondered if any man would ever look at her like that. She closed her closet door.

  “Must be my time of the month,” she said out loud as she gathered some of Drew’s books. “Lucky girl to be on her way to Disneyland with her father and his family.”

  Persi thought of her own father who’d married too soon after her mother’s death. Two and a half years. Disrespectful. Until Brad, she hadn’t wondered if her dad and Sylvia knew each other while her mom was alive and sick. Few things were more heinous than a married man who cheats on his wife while she was either pregnant or sick. What about the vow, for better or worse. In sickness and health?

  Yeah. It must be my time of the month. Chocolate. I need chocolate, she thought.

  Persi never liked Sylvia; she tried too hard. Diana was already out of the house when their mother died and Persi was on her way, but Athena was caught in the cross fire between Dad and Sylvia, though her younger sister seemed to have managed. When her father and his new wife began having children—it was just too weird a notion for Persi to warm up to. As she matured, Persi had gotten better about her half-siblings, but Sylvia never seemed to bring much to the Sinclair table. Being seven years younger than her father wasn’t an issue, but Sylvia wasn’t educated like the women in her family. Persi’s mother had been an elementary school teacher before she stopped working to take care of her children; her father, an U.S. Post Office administrator. Sylvia . . .what did she do? A clerk at the post office from Kentucky.

  Snob, Persi self-proclaimed, but it was natural to gravitate to folks like you; good, bad or otherwise. Everyone had a comfort zone. She was only snobby when it came to her dad. Sylvia made him happy. So be it; they’re grown-ass people, she thought.

  Persi went into her freezer and popped the lid of Haagen-Dazs Amazon Valley chocolate, drove a spoon deep inside and licked it clean. Orgasmic. Persi pondered the first objection to Sylvia’s cluelessness revolving around their names: Diana April, Persephone May, and Athena June—all Greek mythological mavens, testament to her father’s love of literature and her mother’s penchant for the months. Although her mother was relieved that they’d never had that boy . . . Ajax July Sinclair, as her father thought Jax Sinclair sound like a jock.

  As she plunged her spoon into the cold confection again, she thought how Sylvia would have nothing to contribute to the Sunday dinners they had as youngsters at her great-grandparents’. Persi loved hearing the stories around the Gospel bird about segregated Washington. Her parents, who had Rock Creek Park as a backyard, frequented the Hot Shoppe at Georgia Avenue and Gallatin Streets, the Polar Bear frozen custard further up on Van Buren, Carter Baron Amphitheater for twenty-five cent double-feature movies with cartoons and previews and stayed all day, and slept with their doors unlocked. A time when D.C. public schools were like private institutions and Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Western high schools ruled, where excellence was the norm and students rushed to get to homeroom before the first bell. But her grands and great-grands had the famed U Street. The Black Broadway. The social and commercial mecca in the shadow of Howard University, the educational center of bourgeois black America. Their generation fashioned their own self-contained and sustained universe despite a hostile world that wouldn’t have them or their money. In their cultural enclave, owned, operated, and enjoyed by its residents, black folks pleasured themselves with their own movie houses and the Howard Theater, almost ten years before Harlem’s Apollo, where black royalty like Duke, Count, Sarah, and Nat “King” Cole shared their talents then relaxed at the Bohemian Caverns or Club Bali. As streetcars clanged down U on tracks, normal folk conducted business at Industrial Savings Bank, Standard Drug Store, Thompson’s Dairy, the Whitelaw Market and, since 1858, worshiped at St. Augustine Catholic Church. In response to black folks complaining about discrimination at the main post office, the T Street post office was opened. Their proudest family moments captured by Scurlock Studios and displayed on fireplace mantles in their homes. Baseball games at Griffith Stadium, formal dances at the Whitelaw Hotel and Lincoln Colonnade where her grandmother, a debutante, came out in the 1945 Bachelor Benedict Cotillion. The first YMCA for blacks in the United States was on Twelfth Street, and the pride of attending Old Dunbar High School; the next stop was college . . . a potpourri of clothing haberdasheries, dress shops, millineries, hair salons, and barbershops to keep everybody looking clean as the board of health or sharp as a tack.

  She chuckled, remembering her granddaddy’s sayings, and wondered what made her rehash all of that.

  The phone rang. “Hey professor,” Persi said to her sister Diana. “How goes it?”

  The two sisters spoke for almost an hour, catching up with one another’s lives. As Diana spoke of heading over to her house in the Vineyard for most of the summer, Persi thought about the Shelton home on Martha’s Vineyard where the wife and girls disappeared for a few weeks out of each summer month and she got to play with Brad in D.C.

  “Remember when the cottage at Highland Beach was the best fun we had all summer? We could leave when the sun came up, stay out all day, come home when the sun set and our parents never worried,” Diana mused.

  “I sure do. Now Dad’s put in heat, air-conditioning, and enclosed the side porch.”

  “What’s doing with you this summer? Playing with dirt?” Diana chuckled.

  “Yep. After Disneyland, Drew’s off to Camp Mawavi and Doxie’ll be lost until ViVi comes to town. We’ll get Nola and the Fab Four will ride again.”

  “Oh Lawd, watch out!” Diana said. “You know what today is?”

  “Mom’s birthday,” Persi answered with reverence.

  “I think she is proud of all her girls.”

  “Spoken like the oldest one,” Persi said and thought, Not me with my married man.

  “Athena’s next. She always had it made.”

  “Yeah, she was the lucky one.”

  “I’ve got to go but I’ll talk to you soon. Take good care. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” Persi said and hung up.

  She glanced outside and noticed how the traffic slowed and jammed around two cars and a policeman. Absently, she continued her chores, reflecting on how different her two sisters were. Diana had been her rock after their mother died. While at MIT, Persi visited her frequently because going home to the house where they’d lived with their mother proved too difficult. On the holidays when Persi had forced herself home, Athena seemed to have adjusted flawlessly while Persi had not, another source of pain, so Persi stopped going home. Diana graduated and began her own life and Persi threw herself into her classes. Then her father married Sylvia and Persi was through with him and the house. Upon graduation, carried by her intellect and what would make her mother happy, Persi just continued into the master’s program, forestalling any need to make a definitive decision about her life. When she did visit D.C., she stayed with Doxie until she married, then spent some nights with ViVi and her folks until ViVi stayed on the coast. The one time Persi returned to the family house, her mother’s house, with the same address but different decor, she felt like an orphan. With no homestead, she applied and was accepted to the Ph.D. program and upon graduation accepted the position at NIH. Instead of planning and building her life, she was carried with the tide, not steering it. Not a bad life at all—but not one she designed.

  Persi marched her nieces up the steps and into their house.

  The nanny took them up immediately for baths as Persi plopped on the couch.

  “Bye Aunt Persi!” they sang out, “And thank you!”

  “You’re welcome.” As they disappeared upstairs s
he jokingly added, “Next time I’ll make sure Drew goes with us.”

  Athena chuckled.

  “My hat’s off to you, sis. I dunno how you do it.” Persi rested for a few beats and then sprang up. “Well, let me go. Got to make it back downtown.” She went to kiss her sister on the cheek and headed for the front door. “Where’s Bernard and the boys?”

  “Still out. They’ll come in late and smelly.”

  “Manly men huh?” She noticed Athena seemed tense. “So what’s up?”

  “I’m thirty-one and I feel like I’m missing out on life.”

  Persi looked at her evenly.

  “I mean, you’re going home to do and be whatever you want to. Sleep till noon tomorrow... go nude. Hop a plane and go someplace exotic. You have the perfect, sweet life.”

  Persi let out a loud cackle. “Who knew I’d be bitter from the sweet?”

  Athena looked quizzically at her older, accomplished sister.

  “Every now and then I think it’s human nature to want what you don’t have. I’m thirty-five years old, heading fast toward thirty-six, and yes, my time is my own. My money is my own. My house is my own. There’s a good chance I’ll live out my life...on my own. Maybe alone. I’m all right with that, but sometimes I look at you and think you have it all. A man who loves you free and clear. Sure, he’s a pain in the ass sometimes . . . that’s his job. But he’s there to bring you soup when you’re sick, run out to the store. Takes the kids out so you can read a book. I’ve seen wonderful Christmases here with your children around. Unless I find a really special man in a few years, I can only dream about unborn children who may have made my life complete. You have four. Doxie has one.” She stopped. “What I’m saying is that everyone wonders what would have happened if they took one path instead of the other; turned right instead of left. The trick is to be happy with the road you’ve selected. To make the best of it. See the glass half-full and thank God everyday for your health and the health of those your love. That’s the key.”

  Persi touched her sister’s hand, knowing that losing their mother at an early age played a part in their bouts of collective family melancholia. “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.”

  Athena’s face broke into a wide grin as the twins ran downstairs in their pajamas, clamoring for ice cream.

  “Aunt Persi’s leaving. Say good-bye and thank you,” Athena directed.

  “Good-bye and thank you,” the distracted girls said as they hopped to the kitchen.

  Persi started down Sixteenth Street, got caught by two red lights, cut a left on Whittier Place, made a right on Fourteenth, left on Missouri Avenue and right on Thirteenth, and relaxed. Now she’d be able to cruise home. She passed Roosevelt High School; the brick edifice with pillars sitting atop a hill had been an absolutely beautiful, college-like campus. Now a former shadow of its regal self, it saddened Persi greatly.

  She sailed down the single lane of Thirteenth Street and at U, and contemplated stopping at Ben’s Chili Bowl but decided she didn’t feel like finding a parking space. For the next few blocks she thought that once Athena got a good night’s sleep, awakened in the arms of a man who would be there in the morning, that night and the next morning and tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come, she’d realize her good fortune. Persi swung around Logan Circle into her driveway and supposed everyone’s life looked perfect to outsiders looking in. But life is a crapshoot, she admitted, cutting her engine. What you do for a living and who and if you marry can make or break your world. Despite outward appearances to the contrary, Persi admitted her life was ethically fragile. But it could be worse, she justified as she disarmed her alarm, walked the hallway to her kitchen, flipped on the television, pulled out the last of her Chinese food, dumped it on a plate, and stuck it in the microwave. She started to call Doxie and remembered she was visiting her parents and wondered if she decided to take her current beau. They’d been dating for over a year but, according to Doxie, he was convenient but no sparks. Persi began rifling through her mail. The phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. Persi?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?” She stopped shuffling through her catalogues.

  “The man who helped you celebrate your thirty-fifth.”

  “I guess there’s no sense in me telling you it was really my thirtieth?”

  They both chuckled and Persi couldn’t recall if she’d told him it was her birthday or not.

  “No, that ship has sailed. Although you do look good,” he teased.

  “Don’t say ‘for my age.’”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. So how have you been?”

  “Fine—” she hesitated.

  “Nick. Nick Betancourt.”

  “I remember. I’m not senile. Are you calling from Chicago?”

  “You do remember. I am, but I have a gig in D.C. for four weeks beginning on Saturday and I wanted to invite you to opening night.”

  “Oh.” The microwave chimed and she removed her plate. “This Saturday?”

  “Yep. Up the street from you on U. Balzac’s.”

  “The place to be in D.C. when you want great live jazz. You must be pretty good.”

  “I can hold my own. I’ll put your name on the list.”

  “May I bring a friend?”

  “Sure. Just one?”

  “Just one. What instrument do you play?”

  “The sax.”

  “Of course. So you’re leaving your club in Chi town?”

  He laughed at her reference to Chicago. “Just for a short engagement. Gotta give folks a chance to miss you.”

  They talked affably for a few more minutes before ringing off. “See you this Saturday.”

  “Looking forward to it.” Persi immediately called Doxie at her parents’. “You’re busy this Saturday. We’re going to Balzac’s. You can park here, we’ll walk up and you’ll spend the night unless something else comes up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Trust me. I may be bringing that little ‘sparkle’ to your life you’ve been wanting.”

  “Oh, really? I don’t need another evening dress—”

  “More like undress if you play your cards right. Details later. Tell your folks hi. Bye.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The following Saturday Persi and Doxie compiled and mailed a care package to Drew at Camp Mawavi in Maine and Persi got a text message from Brad in the Vineyard.

  “Time to get dressed,” Persi told Doxie.

  “Do we have to go? Let’s see what the HBO movie is.”

  “No. Go on. Put on that red number.” She shooed her friend to the guest room.

  When Doxie reemerged an hour later, Persi let out a long wolf whistle. “You look good, kiddo. Sexy, not sleazy. Leaving something to the imagination but showcasing those signature big boobs.”

  “I do look good, don’t I?” Doxie enthused. “You don’t look half-bad yourself.”

  “Well, I had to tone it down so as not to outshine you.”

  “Excuse you?” Doxie teased. “Ready?”

  It was hell-hot. Washington D. C. hot with the summer humidity closing in around you and hanging over your head like a thirsty, yet-to-be-wrung-out towel. All matter of people populated Thirteenth Street as they headed for U Street, the most obvious were folks walking dogs and picking up their poop in plastic bags. “I just don’t get it,” Persi said after passing a white couple with a huge Great Dane.

  “That’s a lot of poop over the years,” Doxie said.

  They chuckled. “And we haven’t even started drinking yet.”

  They turned right and the line to Balzac’s stretched up the steps and down the street.

  “Wow. He must be good. You heard of him before?” Doxie asked.

  “No. Jazz isn’t my genre so I couldn’t tell you. He is easy on the eyes. You’ll like him.”

  The pair threaded their way up the stairs, gave their names, and were escorted in to a reserved table for two up front. “Well,
excuse the hell outta me,” Doxie said.

  Persi offered an impressed expression as the waitress took their drink orders.

  By the time they’d completed the first round of watermelon martinis and ordered again, they’d become friends with the women at the next table and clapped vigorously for the female vocalist’s first three numbers.

  “Why don’t we do this more often? This is fun.” Doxie snapped her fingers and danced in the chair as the vocalist belted out a bluesy “Your Husband’s Cheatin’ on Us.”

  After a few more songs, the slender lady with the big voice thanked everyone and announced she was taking a break but the Chip Benoit Trio featuring Nick Betancourt was up next. Their new friends at the neighboring table squealed at the mention of his name.

  Persi knowingly eyed Doxie. “Told you.”

  “Umm. Competition, huh?” Doxie teased.

  They ordered buffalo chicken wings and an artichoke-and-spinach dip with pita chips to accompany their next drink order.

  The trio took the stage and the crowd immediately hushed. Last out, Nick wove his body though the packed tables like a shark fin cutting through a rough ocean . . . smooth. As he climbed the few steps to the stage he took the rapt attention of the female clientele. So furious with Brad at the time, Persi hadn’t remembered much about her “date” the night of her non-birthday. Now Nick’s tall, slender, well-built frame caught her by surprise as his jacket hung open, revealing an imported knit clinging to his solid torso. A symphony in all black, his milk-chocolate complexion vibrated under the dim lights as his cheeks collapsed when he placed his firm, kiss-ready lips on the reed of his sax. He blew into the instrument a couple of times and sent the most beguiling smile to the audience.