Bossy White Lady
I was hopin God had done broke the mold for bossy white ladies when he made Miss Debbie. But that was about like hopin Oprah Winfrey was gon’ ask me to marry her, and sho ‘nough, I met Miss Carmen Brown, this lady on the radio down there in Florida. Miss Carmen is on a show called The Morning Cruise with Dave, Bill, and Carmen. She looks like a white man’s dream, and I ain’t gon’ say she was my nightmare, but I will say she pushed me way past the limit on my comfortability.
First thing she did was float me and Mr. Ron up all across Florida on her radio show, like one of them hot-air balloons. Then she and her radio friends started up a great big bicycle ride to raise money for the homeless and got folks from all over the state to join in. I’m tellin you the truth, that lady can talk to a stump and make it listen! She been talkin ’bout me and Mr. Ron on the radio for more than two years now, and ain’t no sign of her shuttin up.
I learned a lot from knowin Miss Carmen—geography and stuff like that. First time me and Mr. Ron went to Florida for a visit, we was havin us some breakfast down by the ocean. Now, I ain’t gon’ lie, I was tired of Mr. Ron draggin me all across the country. I asked him, said, if he was such a good businessman, why didn’t he take care a’ all our business the first time we was here so we wouldn’ta come back to the same place?
Mr. Ron looked at me over his coffee. “Denver, this is our first trip here,” he said.
“It sure ain’t!” I said. “I remember sittin right here by the water that don’t stop just a couple a’ months ago.”
“Denver, that was California. We’re in Florida, all the way on the other side of America, three thousand miles away.”
Well, my eyes got pretty big then. “Mr. Ron,” I said, “you mean to tell me that Florida went and got themselves a ocean too?”
That wadn’t the last time I seen the ocean in Florida ’cause Miss Carmen invited me to come back again and again. Fact is, if I answered my phone ever time she called, she’d have me busy till the Lord came back to claim me.
One day in 2007, she bought me a ticket on a aeroplane and showed up at the airport to get me. And there she was, this blonde white lady drivin this flashy white-on-white-in-white foreign somethin-or-other. She wrapped me up in a hug like I was family. Color didn’t matter to her, but it did to me. My mind just kinda went back in time to the trouble I’d had with white ladies—like that time I tried to change a flat tire for one of ’em and wound up with a rope around my neck and white boys holdin the other end. I was scared, real scared, like a brother at a Klan rally. Then Miss Carmen pushed a button on the dash, and the whole top a’ that car come off and slipped down in the trunk. And there I was, sittin in the front seat of that white lady’s white convertible, and me stickin out like a hunk of coal in a snowbank. But Miss Carmen was real proud, and she drove me around town like I was one a’ them famous astronauts comin home from a moonwalk.
Now, bein in radio, Miss Carmen knows lots a’ famous singers. I ain’t really no singer, and I told her that, but that didn’t matter ’cause she’s like Miss Debbie. When I say I can’t do somethin, she don’t listen. Before I knowed it, Miss Carmen had done flew me up to Nashville and introduced me to lots of famous singers, like Chris Tomlin. I even got to do a little singin with ’em.
After I got back to Texas, Miss Carmen showed up again, this time at Mr. Ron’s ranch takin lots of pictures, askin too many questions, and bossin me around just like Miss Debbie did, thinkin she was gon’ make me be her best friend. I guess she did a purty good job ’cause today Miss Carmen is ’bout the best white lady friend I got.