“I just don’t understand why you would move down here if you’re not going to let me move in with you.”
I bite back my frustration and take a steadying breath. “Tia…”
“Okay, okay, at least let me set you up. Come to church with me tomorrow, mija, there’s a man I want you to meet. He is a little skinny but other than that, perfect for you. His name is Luis!”
Eight months later, I’m still certain my decision to move to Charlotte was a good one. But I am regretting answering my aunt Mari’s call while rushing around the best I can to get ready for work.
“Thank you, but no thank you,” I say in Spanish to her latest invitation to join her for church this Sunday.
“Oh, come on, mija, Luis will not bite. And he needs a nice, responsible girl like you to keep him off these streets. Plus, his baby’s mother is blonde, and he hates her, so I do not think he will mind your dark skin.”
Wow.
I still don’t quite know how to respond to the blatant colorism often spewed by the older relatives on the Dominican side of my family tree. On one hand, respect your elders. My father would flip out if he heard I talked back to his older sister for any reason.
On the other hand, if I had to take one more phone call from Aunt Mari about some potential candidate she’d dredged up along with her equally colorist church members, I will scream loud enough for the way less color struck Dominicans in New York to hear it. And don’t even get me started on how I have to constantly remind her that I don’t just consider myself a dark Latina, but black. You know, thanks to the Haitian mother, she and some of my other older relatives still can’t believe my father lowered himself to marry.
“Sorry, Tia Mari,” I say instead. Then I switch back to English to tell her, “Hard pass.”
“You’re right maybe we should wait until you lose all that weight,” Aunt Mari says cheerily.
I glare at the phone. “Okay, I’ve got to go, Titi.”
“Wait, we still haven’t talked about me moving in with you!”
“So sorry, Titi, I’m going to be late for work. Not hanging up on you,” I promise. Then I do just that.
Only to get hit with another pang of guilt. No matter what kind of new leaf I’ve decided to turn over here, the old Too Nice Naima, who tries her best to like everyone and wants everyone to like her back is still lurking around.
Too Nice Naima would have gone with her aunt to church to dutifully meet Luis. Then, depending on the level of his sad background story, Too Nice Naima would not only date him, but also spend the majority of her outside work time and energy trying to fix him, all the way up until he left her for somebody better.
Believe me, I’m grateful for my aunt after she not only found me my current job and showed up with several cousins to help me move into my new apartment in a nice neighborhood near the college where I do most of my outreach work. But this move, this new job and this upcoming new phase in my life—it’s meant to be a fresh start. It’s a chance to break all my old patterns, and her trying to set me up isn’t part of the plan.
As I make my way down to the bus stop, I decide I need to nip this in the bud. Tell her I’m not just reluctant to date in my current circumstances, but off the idea of love and relationships altogether.
“I’ve had enough hurt and disappointment in my life.,” I could tell her truthfully. “Too much to be prayed away. Sorry.”
Unlike on the New York subway, a man moves out of his seat as soon as I climb on the bus outside my apartment building, which is already stuffed with people headed into downtown Charlotte.
I sigh as soon as I sit down, taking a moment to catch my breath as I often have to these days after any sort of fast movement.
I didn’t have the dream last night.
Again.
That shouldn’t make me anxious, but it does. Obviously, having a recurring dream about the most traumatic experience of your life for nearly a year straight wasn’t fun. But for some reason, its absence feels even more worrying. Mainly because of what had come before that first dreamless night.
A cemetery kiss that hadn’t disgusted or repelled me, but had turned me on, like no other kiss ever had before.
I still don’t fucking get what Rock ever saw in you.
Yeah, me either, Stone, I think, staring out the window at Charlotte’s charming landscapes as the bus ferries me into work.
What is wrong with me that several months and six hundred miles from New York later, I’m still obsessing over that kiss?