Tea with Atlanta McBride #2

Good morning. I hope you had a real good Thanksgiving Day. I know I did. Gon an' have a seat anywhere. If you want some tea, I already have some hot water on the stove. I was about to make me some right now. You sure? Ok.

I gotta say now, it’s just weird to me that you keep comin’ over here wantin’ to know my stories about my life when it’s people with much more goin’ on than me. I aint never really won no awards or nothin’, but you keep comin’, I keep tellin’, what I care?

I guess what come to mind today, since you don’t never seem to care what I talk about is me and Prince. I know a lot of my stories have something to do with a man. And most of them in my stories don’t never seem to be much good. But in their own way, they was all some good. People mostly tell the bad part of a story because that’s what’s still stuck in their minds, ‘cause that part aint all the way smoothed out yet. It’s like our brains is some kinda garbage disposal or somethin’. You take a big ole pot and fill it up with your life and pour it down the garbage disposal and turn it on. What you find is the parts that went on real easy and the parts that didn’t go so easy but you got ‘em all worked out for yourself. Them parts just go down real good. But the parts that still aint all the way right with you, even though you think they are, just get stuck in the drain and make the noise in your mind. Like a spoon that gets stuck, keeps going Wrenk! Wrenk! Wrenk! ‘Till you pull it up and straighten it out.

Well, I met Prince on the streets. It’s funny how we met because I’m the one always sayin’ that I wouldn’t never meet up with no man on the street. I just never thought it was proper for a lady. Don’t you look at me like I don’t know what’s proper for a lady or not. You just never do know what you gettin’ when you meet somebody on the street. It’s better to meet somebody in the church or a bar or a school or something like that. That way you kinda know a little about what they into from the beginning. On the street, you don’t know. Well, I was driving along and came up to a red light. Who should pull up next to me but this real handsome lookin’ man. He was like what they would call regal. Had a deep thick accent. He look like Prince Charming. He even drove a white car. Like he was comin’ up on a white horse or somethin’. That’s why I call him Prince. Oh boy, I can hear it loud now. Wrenk! Wrenk! Wrenk! I may get through this and I may not. Anyway, he pulled up beside me and my window was already rolled all the way down and maybe so was his or he rolled it down just to talk to me real quick. He asked me in that thick mustard voice of his if he could have my phone number and get to know me. I just gave him my number nice and slow so he didn’t forget it. Sure enough he had called me by the time I got home. And that’s how that started.

I called him back the same day and he wanted to come and visit me but I knew that was too soon for somebody to be comin’ over to my house. I don’t too much like bringin’ men around Tanisha. She was about six goin’ on seven then. And smart as a whip. Smart, smart, smart. Well, I was paintin’ a lot back then and I was real good at it. Still am really. I was also still sellin’ my purses but not all the time. Things seem to go in cycles for me. I was sellin’ my art pretty good and so I mostly focused on that hustle. I had got this man over on the other side of town to let me use his shop to have an art show. The show was less than six days away so I invited Prince. We didn’t see each other before then but we talked every day. He was from Nigeria and would tell me about his home, his family back in Nigeria and London and his work over at the Salvation Army. He was somethin’ else.

Well, he showed up at my art show just like I believed he would. We went out to Larry’s after that to get something to eat. Red flags was waving away in my head like crazy but did I listen? No. We don’t always have to learn the hard way, but sometimes we do. He walked me out to my car and pulled out a cigarette and I knew for sure we wasn’t supposed to be together. I can’t stand those stinky things. How you gon be with a man when him and his clothes smell like smoke all the time? You, can’t that’s how. Well, we look over what we wanna look over don’t we? We sure do. It turned out cigarettes wasn’t all he was smokin’. Yeah, after he moved in it got a whole lot stronger than cigarettes.

I believe I’ll have some more tea. What about you? You know, come to think of it, we just gon have to pick this up later on after all ‘cause it’s just too loud in here in my head. I don’t know if you can hear it or not, but it’s sure loud to me. Too loud.