“That one pink bush needs to be dead-headed, it’s all covered with rust spots. You know your mama hates rust spots on her favorite pinks,” Ruth warned, fanning herself from the porch swing. Ororo stood and stretched, digging her knuckles into her lower back as she flexed it. She’d spent the past two hours bending and reaching, cutting and feeding shrubs, yanking milkweed from the flower beds, spreading cedar mulch chips and spreading weed-‘n-feed across the lawn.
“Girl, when was the last time you greased that hair? It looks dry!”
“I used my Biosilk leave-in this morning, Auntie Ruth,” Ororo replied diligently. It never failed; a visit to Mama’s and Aunt Ruth’s always yielded the same lectures and questions:
1) “Did you use enough grease on your hair? When was the last time you had a trim? You need to go over to my stylist at Penney’s to get your brows waxed.”
2) “Have you seen yourself walking away in those jeans?”
3) “So, when are you gonna bring home a husband for us to meet?” This was often followed by “I sure wish you could find yourself a nice young Black man who goes to church!” Lawdhamercy…
4) “Here, why don’t you take home a few things from the pantry? I know I’m not gonna eat this bacon, I don’t even know why I bought it.”
5) “So when are you going back to school?”
6) “You need to take your vitamins. And stop drinking all that caffeine, you’ll give yourself lumpy breasts. You know women in our family get lumpy breasts. Great aunt Fanny always did, in particular…”
…and on, and on, and on…it never failed.
Ororo could never really remember the last time she was thin enough, educated enough, rich enough, pretty enough, or marriage-worthy enough to please her mother. Her aunt Ruth, bless her, at least had the decency to remind her, “N’Dare, at least Ororo isn’t running the streets with awful friends like Kenyatta’s, be thankful, girl!” In hindsight, though, back when they were growing up, Kenyatta had been FUN. Ororo was a couple of years older, but the two of them had always been kind of close, sharing clothes and music, and finding some of the same boys cute. Kenyatta had always been her mouthpiece when girls in school would give her a hard time about her size and coloring. Kenyatta would be in the middle of the hall right before homeroom, informing anyone who got into Ororo’s face, “Girl, you AIN’T all that!” She’d always walk with her to the corner store for Dove bar ice cream pops so they could flirt with the cute boy who worked behind the counter.
After a while, Ororo realized that “fun” didn’t pay the bills. Someone had to be responsible. This became stark reality when her daddy passed away. David Munroe had been a war correspondent and photographer whose work had made it onto the covers of publications like National Geographic and Time, and his daughter was the apple of his eye. When he was stateside, he would bring his little girl in her smart pigtails and corduroy jumpers into the press office to look at the pretty pictures he often took, and explain what was happening in the ones that weren’t so pretty, and she would watch him with rapt, intelligent eyes. He was her daddy, and he was her world.
Having a father that documented and portrayed what was going on in the world inspired Ororo to want to be an active part of what was going on in it, herself. N’Dare was a retired school teacher, and she had always envisioned her daughter following in her footsteps, but to Ororo, shaping and guiding young minds was an awesome task. She wanted to help empower people to help and protect themselves, regardless of their walks of life. There were other ways that she could contribute and give something back, and the shelter network seemed to call her name.
It was just as important to give something back to the family that nurtured her. After David had passed away, N’Dare chose to remain in Delaware, mere blocks away from David’s younger sister, Ruth. The sisters-in-law bickered constantly, made tandem beauty shop appointments, sang in the church choir and went to bingo together, and spent most of their coffee hours in N’Dare’s TV room commiserating over their respective daughters’ seeming inability to bring home a good man.
Ororo wondered how long she would be obliged to stay this time, and how much ammunition they would take from her visit once she left. She tied off the garbage bag of clippings and weeds and tossed them into the bin on the side of the house. “Aunt Ruthie, I’m gonna leave cleaning the gutters til the next time I come.”
“The cold season’s not far off, baby. Don’t leave your mama with clogged gutters before it starts to snow. Last year she had icicles as big around as my arm!” Ororo sighed. It all depended on whether or not she had her car, money for gas, and another available weekend between now and then.
“Please tell me we have some Kool-Aid,” Ororo begged.
“Just mixed some up this morning. Help ya’self.” Ororo picked up the bundle of roses that she clipped for their visit to the cemetery and carried them carefully into the house. She deposited them by the sink and began trimming the thorns off the stalks and rinsing them liberally to knock off the aphids. She grabbed a few of the first of the begonias too, just to flesh out the bouquet and add some more color.
Ororo shucked her gardening gloves and tossed them into the gardening box in the laundry room. She scrubbed her hands with some of her mother’s lemon Joy and picked the grit from beneath her nails. Her pretty manicure from a couple of nights ago was a lost cause. The Kool-Aid was calling her name, and Ororo poured herself a tall glass with ice. She was just about to sit next to Ruth on the porch swing, when her aunt said “Before you sit down, could you run on upstairs and grab me my reading glasses?”
“Right,” Ororo muttered. “I wasn’t gonna sit down, or anything.” She set her glass on the railing and scuttled upstairs for the glasses. And she ran into yet another road block on her way back down.
“Ororo, come here for a minute and tell me if I combed out the back of my hair?” She automatically handed Ororo the wide-toothed comb, and Ororo dutifully fluffed her mother’s roller curls and gave it one last flick. “Make sure the waves are going in one direction,” she chided.
“They are.”
“I have that one cowlick that won’t lie down,” she reminded her. Ororo didn’t disagree; she had the same cowlick.
“Already got it. Is the cemetery your only stop today?”
“Your aunt Ruthie ‘n I are headed over to the Giant market this afternoon to pick up some things for the church barbecue. I’m making an ambrosia salad.”
Ororo’s mouth watered. “Bring some back for me,” she begged.
“Wouldn’t hurt you to go with us to the barbecue,” N’dare murmured, cutting her eyes accusingly at her daughter, who raised her eyebrows innocently. “Clover is bringing her grandson who I told you about last week with her. He’s back from his year with Americorp.” The last date Ororo had been fixed up with from the “offerings” at her mother’s church hadn’t gone well. Ororo had lived in New York too long.
“That’s nice,” Ororo sang. “I’ve gotta get Ruthie’s glasses.” Ororo made her escape without committing to anything.
“Clover said he’s got some great photos from his trip,” N’Dare called after her as she tripped down the stairs.
“That’s NICE,” Ororo repeated, hurrying out toward the porch with the glasses.
“Did your mama tell you about Clover’s grandson who wants to meet you at church tomorrow?”
Aaaargh…
“I’ve gotta get Kenyatta’s car back to her so she can get to work. I’m picking up mine from the shop on Monday night.”
“What happened to it?”
“Alternator went out.”
“You need a new car, baby girl.”
“I need new car money.”
“You need you a rich man,” Ruthie admonished, lifting a brow over the edge of her reading glasses as she picked up her Harlequin romance novel. “What’s keeping your mother?”
“Cowlick,” Ororo replied, taking a sip of her Kool-Aid.
The three women spent the next forty-five minutes deciding which car to take, hunting down the address to the cemetery again, fussing over whether they needed sun hats if they weren’t going to be there long, and N’Dare remaining unconvinced that her cowlick wasn’t showing. Once they parked the car and strolled out to the headstone, Ororo arranged the flowers in the little plastic cone and reinserted it into the stand. Out of habit, she wiped down the marble headstone with a damp rag, making sure to get the crevices in the engraved lettering: “David N. Munroe, Beloved Husband and Father.” Ruth handed N’Dare a Kleenex from her purse, and she sniffled quietly into it, dabbing her eyes.
“Ain’t the same without him,” Ruthie murmured. “Back when we were young, your father used to run off with my Barbies, bend ‘em in half, and pretend they were guns. He and our cousin Teddy would play shoot ‘em up with my dolls, can you believe that foolishness?” Ororo grinned. She certainly could. They spent a few more minutes gathering up stray bits of debris and leaves from his plot and chucking them out, and Ororo stopped to talk to another family at an adjacent stone, flirting with the adorable toddler holding tightly to her mother’s hand. She grinned with gappy teeth when Ororo fished out the blue lollipop in her purse from the bank that she never ate.
N’Dare linked her arm through Ororo’s on the way back to the car. “I want you to have what your father and I had. Or even what that family back there had.”
“What I have isn’t all that bad,” Ororo reminded her, but she felt a pang at the memory of that cute little girl, grinning at her.
“One of these days, baby girl, it won’t be enough.”
Sunday night:
Ororo tromped up the stairs with leaden feet and aching hamstrings from the long drive back, still feeling the sting of her yard work from the day before. Still, it was good to go home. Her mother had kept her lectures about Ororo’s lack of a love life down to a bare minimum, and Ruthie packed up a bag of her mother’s food items that she “didn’t know why she bought anyway” to supplement her meager groceries.
Kenyatta had dropped her back at her apartment, giving her chagrined thanks for topping off the gas tank. “You can return the favor for me when I get my car out of the shop,” she demurred.
“You know I’ve gotcha covered,” she promised. Likely story, but at least she meant well, Ororo mused.
Ororo relaxed on her couch, listening to her Lenny Kravitz CD, humming along to “Let Love Rule” as she stripped off her chipped polish. She debated on whether or not to apply a fresh coat, considering that she didn’t really have anyone to impress…until she remembered that she was picking up her car tomorrow night. She thought about the mechanic with the warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners. What was his name again?
Ah, Logan. That’s it. Ororo dipped the brush into a bottle of deep plum polish and started on her thumb.
The following morning found Ororo hopping into her nylons and praying that the tiny snag starting above the thigh didn’t work its way down to her knees. She finger-combed her curls that she’d wet-set and blow-dried, mentally checking her hair for the cursed cowlick before deciding she wasn’t going to obsess about it. Jon had always looked at her like she was insane whenever she brought it up. Ororo had only wished she had been more observant about some of the little signs of his infidelity: receipts for lunches that looked suspiciously high for just one person, a used condom wrapper that fell out of his pants pocket in the laundry, an odd “hang-up” message on her answering machine, and the sudden, frequent late nights when he wouldn’t come home until the wee hours of the morning, and never wanted to explain where he’d been. She’d thought she was just “giving him space” by not nagging him to death about it; it turned out she wasn’t giving him enough.
Ororo added a dash of color to her lips, choosing the plum lipstick that matched her nail polish, spritzed herself with Secret, and patted on some of the Sparkling Cassis talc that coordinated with the body wash in her shower. At least the zit on her forehead no longer looked like a third eye…
She hopped the subway to work and flipped through the morning paper. Anna Marie shot her a wary look. Ororo chafed, hating to ask “Did I get any messages?”
“Ya’ve got another impromptu meeting with Miss Frost,” she sighed, handing her the Post-it pad. Ororo tore off the top sheet savagely.
“Grrrr. Grrrrr,” she mock-growled, stalking off to her office.
“I’ll rescue ya fer coffee in an hour, toots,” Anna promised.
“I’m holding you to that!”
Just when Ororo’s experience with Inner Circle’s director wasn’t harrowing enough the week before, the threat had multiplied itself times three. Ororo’s office was crowded when she opened her door.
“There you are!” Emma trilled brightly, still riding the high of her “herbs” and filling Ororo’s office with the scent of Chanel. “Ororo, I’d like you to meet Selene Gallio and Jean Grey. Selene’s function is almost parallel to yours in our division, and Jean is my personal assistant.”
“I sent you the fax,” Selene informed her nasally.
“Of course! Thank you for that.” Thanks for heaping a pile of crap on my desk that you two could have done yourselves. “I began making some cold calls last week.”
“Would you mind bringing us up to date, dear? Whom have you heard back from?” Ororo set her satchel down behind her desk and booted up her PC. She opened her Word program window before any of the three vultures could spy the Wicked Stepmother icon on her desktop. Ororo opened up the Excel spreadsheet file that she’d begun with the list of contact names and companies, whether they had accepted or declined the opportunity to donate auction items, and what they were if they had.
“Oh, what a helpful little file,” Jean cooed, peering at Ororo’s monitor when she turned it to face them for easier viewing. Ororo mentally rolled her eyes.
“We could always add on to that,” Selene purred, her dark eyes sharp.
We?
“Ororo, it would be wonderful if after the auction itself, you could add the closing bids and the names of the winners as two more columns on this and route myself, Jean and Selene a copy via email?”
“Of course,” Ororo beamed, contenting herself with the image of stabbing herself in the eyeballs with a letter opener.
Ororo studied her guests with some irony, noting she was the only one who hadn’t chosen a monochromatic wardrobe that day. Emma was in yet another white suit, this time Anne Taylor with a pair of cream Manolo Blahnik pumps that gave Ororo a bunion just looking at them. Selene wore a shirred black wrap dress and strappy black sandals that looked like she was on her way out to a dinner date. Jean also wore black, but it was almost a Mary Quant-style dress with a wide patent leather belt and matching kitten-heeled pumps that made Ororo envy her tiny feet. Ororo almost felt gaudy by comparison in her cornflower blue blouse sprigged with tiny white daisies and the lavender tapered skirt, but there was no help for it. She enjoyed color.
“Ororo, is there any way we could get some coffee?”
“Our break room is right down the hall, if you’d like to take a brief-“
“We’d love it if you could bring some back, if you’re on your way down there,” Emma smiled.
Grrrr. Grrrr.
“I’ll be RIGHT back,” she assured them brightly, taking swift strides past the cubicles, favorite mug in hand. Even Wonder Woman seemed to be pouting…
“Thought ya wanted me ta come get ya for ““
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…wishful thinking, girl!” Ororo strode into the break room and dug in the cabinet for the extra coffee mugs reserved for visitors and retrieved three. She left behind the one from Hot Topic that said “Boys Eat Their Own Boogers.” Anna Marie would never forgive her if she served the Weird Sisters coffee out of her favorite cup… Ororo prepared a fresh urn of regular coffee to justify the delay back to her office, which no longer felt like HER office, and fetched a serving cart from the supply room. She loaded it up with a carton of sugar and creamer, then belatedly realized Emma wouldn’t touch coffee, and it would be bad form to go back to her office without some beverage offering. She snagged a green tea bag and a couple of packets of Equal and filled the plain white mug with steaming water from the hot spout on the coffee machine.
Rumbling male chuckles greeted her efforts from behind the cubicle outside her office. “Waitress, I’ll take a cheese Danish and scrambled eggs, with the icing for the Danish on the side, make that separate checks!”
“Here, pucker up, I’ll bend over,” Ororo offered, winking with meaning at Scott from Accounting. That sent him into a full guffaw before he turned back to his monitor. “Danish, my ass,” Ororo muttered before opening her door and backing her way in with the cart.
“Oh, isn’t this nice!” Ororo’s cheeks burned; she could have sworn she had interrupted what sounded like office gossip as she made her precipitous re-entry. Selene clapped her compact shut and tucked her blood red lipstick back into her purse before shooting Ororo a smile that was positively serpentine. Jean watched Ororo park the serving cart as she continued to file her nails.
Lazy, high-maintenance, uppity… “Thought you might favor some tea, Emma.”
Emma made a small moue. “There wasn’t any bottled water?”
Die. Die. Die. Ororo excused herself and crossed over to Scott’s cube, threatening him with dire consequences if he didn’t foot her a buck for the vending machine. Ororo shot Anna Marie an ugly look on her way back to the break room, sending her into a fit of the giggles. Anna knew 'Ro was likely to kill her, but she would have died for that laughter. DIED for it.
The next hour was spent arranging for a DJ (Ororo did it), scheduling a radio spot (Ororo took care of that), and adding a few more businesses to her contacts for the auction donations.
The really grating part that made Ororo’s teeth ache was just around the corner…
“So girls, what should we do for costumes?” Emma clapped her hands together like Sister Maria teaching the Von Trapp children how to sing do-re-mi.
“Costumes?” Ororo asked weakly. “What should we do for costumes?”
“We need to cut a real dash,” Emma suggested.
“Maybe something matching?” Jean’s tone was plaintive, but she had the look of someone that knew her suggestion would be taken to heart.
“I want something in black,” Selene insisted. It figured.
“Perhaps you could scour the costume shops and come up with some choices?” Emma turned to Ororo.
“Perhaps,” Ororo agreed. Hell, there was always Google.
The overwhelming cloud of Chanel gradually evaporated an hour after they left, during which time Ororo chewed mints to clean the scent off her palate and made more cold calls and successfully scheduled the spot. For some reason the ad sales rep laughed when she mentioned she was calling on behalf of Inner Circle Management.
“Girlfriend, you sound too much like a human being to be Selene from that office!” Ororo nearly choked on her coffee. That moment of justice buoyed her through the rest of the afternoon.
It was time to pick up her car.
Anna Marie dropped her by the lot of Howlett Auto Parts and Repair. “Place is tiny, ain’t it?”
“It’s not bad. The mechanic didn’t make me feel like a clueless girl when I came in last week. That alone’s worth the money.” Ororo closed the passenger door, then leaned back inside the window. “Are you planning on going to the charity ball?”
“Only if Uppity Britches comps me a ticket or two so I can bring Remy.”
“Anna, hello? You work for Alternatives!”
“Ain’t seen my name on anyone’s comp list,” Anna sang, shooting Ororo her patented “girl, PLEASE!” look.
“I’ll drop a well-placed reminder to the folks in Accounting. Maybe even put the fear of God into Summers…”
“Cool. ‘Bye!”
“G’night.” Ororo fluffed her hair in the side view mirror before Anna pulled out; Anna gave her one last quizzical look before she waved goodbye. The door’s chime sounded when she walked in, bringing in a breath of fresh air inside with her. The shop appeared empty. “Hello?” She ventured to the back of the store, peering back at the desk.
Nobody home. “Huh.” Ororo’s heels clicked against the mottled, gray speckled linoleum tile as she headed over to the side entrance of the garage. She wrapped on the pane before entering. “Hulloooooo?” Her voice echoed slightly off the concrete floors, and faint shafts of light broke the gloom of the service area, along with worklights hanging up from power cords. She turned and scanned the room; her car wasn’t inside. She supposed that was a good sign. That was when she noticed a vintage Cadillac hoisted up off the floor, high enough for a coverall-clad body to stand beneath it and make adjustments to the undercarriage.
A familiar, compact body whose rippling backside she hadn’t had the opportunity to enjoy on her last visit. She took that opportunity now. Her mouth dropped open on a low gasp. It shouldn’t be legal for a man to look that good in ugly green coveralls. She heard him curse under his breath when he dropped the socket wrench onto the concrete with a resounding clang. He bent to pick it up, then peered around his leg at his unexpected visitor.
Logan mused to himself, Shit, she even looks fantastic upside-down. He righted himself and tossed his wrench into the tool tray beside the car. “Hi!”
“Hey. I, uh, knocked. Wasn’t sure if you heard me, or anything.” A brief flash of memory came to her of paying for Dove bars with Kenyatta at the corner store, counting out the wrong change when the cute cashier smiled at her. Yeah, this moment was a lot like that…
“Sorry about that, I was…my hands were a little…full.” He raked one through his waves of glossy black hair, and Ororo restrained the urge to wipe away a smudge of motor oil from his cheek. He had a square jaw kissed with a fine layer of five o’clock shadow and, now that she noticed, a faint cleft in his chin. Damn.
“Is my car ready?”
“Yup. Wanna head out back with me? I’d like to watch you start her up, before we settle up your ticket.”
“Great. Lead on!” And he did, until they reached the side door, when he rushed ahead to hold it open. Logan was well-raised, you could give him that.
But he was dying for another look at those incredible legs in that luscious little skirt.
Logan ducked behind his counter and grabbed Ororo’s key chain from the wall of hooks, shucking his dirty work gloves before he took it. He held open the shop door as he had the first, and she flicked him a shy smile over her shoulder. The last of the evening sunlight danced on her hair again and brought out the flecks of silver, gentian, and violet in her blue eyes, which rivaled the sky itself.
“I got a kick out of your key chain,” he admitted.
“My what?” Ororo peered down at it, and the shiny pink trinket seemed incongruous in his wide, thick palm. He had fantastic hands. “Oh! That.” She shook her head. “Got it from my cousin.”
“She sounds like a hoot.”
“Lord, yes!” Her laughter lit up her face and showed off even white teeth. Logan unlocked the driver’s side and let himself in, sitting half-in, half-out of the car and making room for Ororo to watch him.
“She starts fine now,” he explained, and inserted the key into the ignition. A deft turn of his wrist and the car hummed to life. No more death rattle.
“Cool,” Ororo sighed. “Now people won’t hear me cussin’ from down the block trying to start my hoopty ride.”
“Hey, don’t hurt her feelings. I love an Impala,” he assured her, and he caressed the vinyl of the dashboard almost lovingly. He furrowed his brow slightly and faced her, still enjoying the view that sitting at this angle afforded him of her legs and shapely torso. Her skirt was distracting him. “I meant to ask you something else. Is that CD in your deck relatively new?”
“Dunno,” she shrugged. “Which one was it?” She peered at the dash, and Logan obliged her by hitting the eject button. The disc popped out of the carriage and he handed it to her carefully, by the outer edges. Maxwell: Urban Hang Suite. Her favorite.
“No. It’s actually an oldie but goodie. I’m surprised I haven’t worn it out by now. This is his first disc, I think he’s had two or three more.”
“That’s what was playing when I got the car to start after I put in the new alternator. It’s not bad,” he offered. Then the thought occurred to him, “You probably want me to get out of the way so you can take your car.”
“If you like,” she grinned, thinking she didn’t mind him right where he was. She almost added “Unless you were planning on coming home with me.” No. No, no, no…even if it was tempting. And he was tempting. She peered at his hands again.
No wedding band. Hunh.
He levered himself out of the car and handed her the keys. “Ready to settle up the ticket?”
“Ready, Freddie.”
“Geez, haven’t heard anyone use that phrase in ages!”
“It was one of my daddy’s favorites. He had a few that were kinda fun that way.” He led her back to the counter and rang up her bill, handing her the yellow copy. A faint spark of electricity ran through her arm at the grazing touch of his fingertips. Surely she was imagining it…
He placed the white original on the spindle with a flourish and announced “All set!”
“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr…what did you say your name was?”
“Logan. That’s actually my middle name. On my driver’s license I’m James Howlett.”
“I like Logan, but what’s wrong with James?”
“Everybody and their brother’s named James.” She rewarded him with a laugh that deepened her dimples. He came out from behind the counter and walked her back outside.
“Try having a name that you never, ever find on a personalized mug,” she challenged him. “Name one other person you’ve ever met named Ororo. I dare you.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever met a woman by that name. To be honest,” and his hand lingered on the edge of her door as she let herself back into her car, “I don’t remember the last time I met anyone quite like you.” Her gaze grew thoughtful and held his through the open window. The clouds were moving a little faster in the sky overhead, creating a dramatic backdrop for those chocolatey eyes and burnished skin.
“Goodnight, Logan,” she murmured softly.
“G’night, Ororo.” He stepped back to allow her to back out, and was pleased when she looked back to wave to him as she pulled out into traffic.
[Reviews - 123]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story |
Has been viewed 3135 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story | - Text Size +
You must login () to review.
