“I thought you were my girlfriend. I asked you two weeks ago, and you said yes.”
“But it doesn’t count if no one else knows. And what about my mama? You know she’s crazy.”
He put my hand back to his fly, telling me, let him take care of that. If there was anything he knew how to do, it was how to handle a mother.
That evening, my mother knocked on my door. “Ailey, I just had a strange conversation. It was that boy that calls for homework all the time. Chris Tate?”
My chest clutched, but I kept my voice casual. “He called you for homework?”
“No, baby, of course not. But I think that boy has a crush on you.”
“What? No. Uh-uh.”
“Something’s going on when he takes twenty minutes of his telling me how pretty and nice you are, but that you won’t pay him any attention.”
“No, I won’t, because he’s gross! And, like, super slow.”
“Don’t be mean, baby. Boys sometimes lag way behind, but they catch up. That’s a natural fact.”
She sat down on the bed. “Ailey, please don’t be mad, but I invited him over for dinner on Sunday.”
“Oh my God! Oh Jesus.” I hoped my acting skills were holding up.
“Give the boy a chance. He can’t be that homely, and you’re old enough to keep company. Date. Go out. Whatever you young folks call it. And it’s not like you’ve got that many options at school with nothing but white boys. Though you know I’m not prejudiced.”
“Sure you’re not, Mama.”
On Sunday, Chris showed with a bouquet of red Gerbera daisies for my mother. He wore khakis, a white dress shirt, a blue blazer, and a red tie. He was polite, shaking my father’s hand, and he listened to the stories of my aunt and mother. Chris’s table manners were flawless; I saw Nana watch him with grudging approval as he took small bites and used his cutlery properly. He’d even rested his fork on his plate at meal’s end.
I sat at the other end of the table and produced my most obnoxious behavior. I rolled my eyes and sighed loudly at intervals. When I went in the kitchen to help my mother with dessert, she told me, stop being so rude. Chris was good-looking and his father was a doctor. I could do worse. And see how he’d thanked her for the wonderful meal?
“I’ve got a feeling if you gave him a chance, you might actually like him.”
“As if,” I said.
When it was time for Chris to leave, my mother produced a sweet potato pie, wrapped in aluminum foil. She told him it was for his mother, and she invited him back the next Sunday, discreetly pinching my back when I protested. The next time he called for “homework,” she knocked on the door, grinning.
“It’s your man.”
“Ew, Mama. Please.”
There were more Sunday dinners, where I made a show of warming to Chris, as my mother watched beaming. I followed her into the kitchen, carrying dirty dishes, and she urged me, go sit on the couch with the boy. Talk to him. He sure was good-looking, wasn’t he?
During Christmas vacation, she suggested that Chris take me to a Saturday matinee. Wouldn’t that be nice? After she called Mrs. Tate, of course. And examined Chris’s insurance papers and driver’s license, and the mechanic’s report for his used BMW. My father was at the hospital working, but he would want to know she’d checked everything thoroughly. Chris told her he would go out to the car and get the paperwork. When he shut the front door, Mama told me, don’t tell her she didn’t have good taste in men.
When Chris collected me that Saturday, I told him we really had to watch the movie. My mother would be expecting a detailed description of the plot. But I’d brought an old jacket with me, and I draped it over his lap during the show and slipped my hands inside his pants.
By spring break, Mama trusted Chris enough to drive me to the City library for a study session, but instead, that morning, he and I headed to the Planned Parenthood clinic. He’d been begging for sex ever since Christmas, and I wanted it as much as he did, even as clueless as he was about the female body. I was sixteen and about to explode, but I didn’t want to get pregnant. And I didn’t trust Chris with taking complete responsibility for birth control.
At the clinic, I was afraid I’d be ashamed, but the receptionist treated me politely, not as if I should be worried that she would call the fake phone number I gave her and report me as a whore to whatever stranger answered. When my name was called, there were pleasant crinkles around my nurse’s blue eyes. In the exam room, she asked, had I ever been sexually active?