CHAPTER 44

Theresa blew her nose again and took a long swallow of her drink.

Crown and Coke.

I don’t know why I drink the same thing after all these years. Theresa was looking for another Kleenex. Finding none, she went to the bathroom to use toilet tissue. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she winced. I’m a mess.

Her eyes were puffy, her nose was swollen and red, and her hair was all over her head like that of a wild woman. She was still wearing the suit she had on this morning. The same suit she had gotten fired in. Fired.

I’ve never been fired before.

“I’m good at what I do!” Theresa said out loud, to everyone and no one.

She kept trying to forget what had happened. How Dee Dee had fired her. But the more she tried, the more vivid the memory became.

“Your inadequacy, your poor and reckless job performance are not only a threat to my business but also poison for my reputation, a reputation that I’ve worked too long to build.”

“Dee Dee, please let me explain…”

“No explaining, Theresa,” Dee Dee said, her tone deceptively even. “I want you out of my sight ASAP,” she said, dismissing her with a wave of her hand—like she was a child, or some kind of pesky insect.

“This is a mistake, Dee Dee. I didn’t write that letter…”

“Then who did?! Give me a name; give me something that says you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I don’t know who did it, Dee Dee, but I’m telling you I had nothing to do with this! Why would I do something like that?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out, Theresa. Can you explain who wrote the letter and sent the e-mail?”

“No.”

Dee Dee nodded.

“Leave, Theresa. You’ll be receiving your severance package as outlined in your contract. But I advise you to leave my office right now and collect your things.”

She walked out of Dee Dee’s office for the last time.

She came home and crumbled into a ball, having the worst panic attack in her life. It took her over an hour to calm her nerves and that was after two pills and a stiff drink. She wasn’t supposed to mix alcohol with her pills, but she didn’t have anywhere to go tomorrow. With no job, she could lie in bed all day and let the medicine wear off. Theresa watched a tear roll down her puffy face and knew tonight that tear would not be lonely; it would be joined by many other tears.

On her way, to the kitchen to fix a TV dinner, she heard the phone ring; she let the machine pick up.

“Hello, Theresa, this is Carol. Give me a call at home when you get this message.”

“Hello to you, too, Mama,” Theresa muttered. She could never say ‘mama’ or ‘mom’. Always Carol.

Her mother would never forgive her. To this day, Theresa still didn’t know what went wrong…

Theresa always knew she was pretty. Everyone always told her so, even told her mother.

“That daughter of yours, Carol, sure is a looker. She could be on the cover of a magazine.”

The compliments enraged her mother, and she kept Theresa childlike and innocent by keeping her hair in pigtails.

She started developing breasts at nine, and her period started later that year.

“It must be something in the water. I didn’t get my cycle until I was sixteen years old. What’s wrong with you, girl?” she screamed, holding her down in the bath tub, scalding hot water turning her delicate skin into raw meat. The burn festered and oozed for days until Carol took her to the emergency room, daring her to deny the lies she told the doctor. When they came home, Carol began taping her breasts down, ignoring her screams as she rubbed the tender meat on her shoulder. The tape was tight, and she could hardly breathe. But she let her mother continue to wrap her breasts flat as a mummy. Anything to make Carol happy.

“Mama, I can’t breathe. Why do I have to do this every day?” she whined.

“No daughter of mine is gonna be walking these streets looking like some Jezebel! I better not ever catch you trying to take it off! You hear me?! Don’t ever take that tape off unless you’re bathing or going to bed. You better not leave the house without taping down. You getting too grown for yo own good, I can’t have you giving people the wrong message. Shoot, you already got all my church friends thinking you gonna be some kind of café woman.”

Theresa nodded, not understanding why having breasts could give people the wrong message.

She continued taping her breasts down until she got to high school and had to shower for gym class. She saw that not one of the other girls had her chest taped down. She didn’t want to be different, so she asked her Aunt Mavis to take her to the mall so she could buy a bra.

“You ain’t wearing one yet? What’s that crazy mama of yours teaching you over there?” she asked, laughing.

After their trip to the mall, she looked at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw. She was beautiful. She decided to walk to her friend Kasandra’s house and show her the new look.

“Oh, my God! You’re huge! What size are you?” Kasandra shrieked.

“I don’t know. The tag says I’m a 34D, whatever that means.”

“You’re a D-cup? You make me sick! What I would give just to get out of this training bra,” she said, pointing to her chest.

She eyed Theresa up and down.

“You know, you look really stupid to still be going around school with those pigtails. Let me do something with your hair…”

“No way! Mama would kill me.”

“Who’s gonna tell? Not me. Come on, just let me play with it…”

An hour later, Theresa walked out of Kasandra’s house, her long sandy brown hair dancing down her back and a light rosy lip gloss coloring her lips.

“Oooh weee! Baby, you looking gooood!” a boy across the street yelled.

Theresa had never received much attention from boys, and the boy’s comment made her blush.

From then on, she would change clothes every morning at school before first period, and flat-iron her long sandy-brown hair until it cascaded down her back. The attention she got from the boys was just what she needed; at home, there was none. Oh, she would get slapped and kicked and punched and cursed at, while her father hid behind his newspaper, not saying a word, fearing his wife’s wrath as much as his daughter did. Even the teachers noticed her newfound confidence, and her mediocre grades improved to the point of winning the Most Improved award.

“Are your parents coming?” Kasandra asked as she helped her flat-iron her hair the morning she was to receive the award at the assembly.

Theresa remembered how her mother had beat her when she told her she had won the award.

“Most improved, huh? What you doin’ in school before all this to win this award, huh? Was you smokin’?”

“No, Mama—”

Slap.

“Drinkin’?”

“No—”

Slap.

“Oh, I see you…been foolin’ around with boys, haven’t you? You been lettin’ them touch you and see you naked, haven’t you?”

“No, Mama, please stop…”

“Who do you think you are, tellin’ me to stop? I tell you the way things go around here, missy, not the other way around.”

“No, my parents aren’t coming,” Theresa said, rubbing her cheek as if her mother had just slapped her.

“Good for you, I guess. Your crazy mama would beat the black off you if she saw you dressed like this. You sitting on stage in the auditorium in a skirt.”

“Don’t worry, they never make it to stuff like this. They definitely not coming.”

Hours later when Theresa heard her name announced, walked to the podium…and froze.

Her mother’s steely gaze pierced her skin and she literally could not move.

The principal called her name again, beckoning her to come forward.

But she still couldn’t move; all she saw was her mother mouthing the words, “I’m gonna get you.”

Theresa started shaking uncontrollably and dread consumed her. Then, as if trapped in a nightmare, she peed all over herself. She was that afraid of what her mother would do to her when she got home.

Screams and laughter erupted from her classmates.

When she tried to run, she slipped on her urine and fell. Covered in the ammonia-like smell she finally regained her balance and walked off the stage, running to the nearest restroom.

Her mother was waiting for her in the hall.

“You little harlot! I knew, I knew you was up here acting like some Jezebel,” she hissed. “You all exposed to the world, embarrassing me like this! Showing your legs for all them boys to look at. Titties out for the world to see!”

She grabbed Theresa’s long hair and pulled it so she could whisper in her ear. “You coming home right now, and I’m gonna beat you so you won’t be able to show them pretty legs for a long time.”

Carol always kept her promises.

Theresa was so bruised she couldn’t return to school for weeks. For that, she was thankful. She didn’t know how she could face anybody after that horrible day.

Once her body was healed enough, she packed some clothes and stole enough money for a taxi to her Aunt Mavis’s house. Theresa left a note and told her where she was. Her mother called her one time.

“If you think my sister can raise you better than me and your daddy, then good riddance to you. You ain’t been nothin’ but a thorn in my flesh ever since you been born. Gone and stay with her and see how you fare. You gonna be just like her. She’s a hussy, too, the same as you.”

Her aunt tried all the time to tell her that her mother was the one who was crazy, that she was perfectly fine with the body she had been born with.

But she kept wondering if she’d been born different, if she’d had smaller breasts and hips, would her mother had loved her?

Maybe, if I was shaped like Yolanda, I might not have turned out just like my aunt—man after man, but still alone after all these years.

She used to be able to always count on her career, but now, with that gone, what did she have anymore?

Theresa looked around her apartment.

Nothing. She had nothing. She was nothing.