The Makeover Read online

  In one last attempt to retain his housing, Cedric grabbed her into a hug and pulled her close. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to move out. I want to stay here. I need to stay here…with you.”

  Phoenix froze in his arms, but his warmth started to melt the ice in her heart. She collapsed against him like a rag doll. She needed to be held, even if it was by the very person who had destroyed her.

  For a minute, Phoenix allowed her anger to fade as her softness curved against his firm chest. She let her fingers trace the tattoos on his muscled arms. She pulled back for a second to take in his handsome, brown face, to peer into his hazel eyes, to trace his chiseled cheekbones with her fingertips. She ran her fingers through his curly jet hair. She sighed and wrapped her arms back around his neck. She pressed firmly against him, squeezing her eyes shut, inhaling his cologne.

  Why did I ever think a man who looks like this could ever want me? God, I can’t let him go. God help me. What should I do?

  She did not get an answer in her mind or heart. What she did get was the echo of Cedric saying, “I need to be here…”

  He was still trying to use her!

  Phoenix jerked away from him with a strength that was not her own and stared as realization burned its way up from her stomach. “Yeah, I know. You’re sorry. You’re willing to attempt to fall in love with me but I have to lose weight. I get it. But no thanks. I may not be beautiful, but I still have my mind. I can’t let you destroy it. I counsel women who go through this every day and I refuse to become one of them. I don’t want you here because you need me. I want you here because you love me.”

  Cedric looked away, defeated that his last attempt failed. He realized that there was no way to take back the truth he had tried to hide. He stood and his face hardened with the same truth he had been hiding. “Yeah, well, I’ve always been with you because I needed you. It’s what made it bearable to get into this bed with you every night.”

  Phoenix pushed him. “Go now, before I knock your lights out! Go!” Her shrill voice ricocheted around the room as she bent to retrieve the baseball bat from the floor.

  “I’m going, Fe. I’m going.”

  “I hope God forgives you, Cedric, for using me all this time. You need to pray.”

  Cedric laughed. “Being a hypocrite makes you even less attractive than you already are, Fe. When I met you, you said you were a Christian and was always going to church. But that sure didn’t stop you from letting a little attention from me change your mind really quick! You slept with me on our second date and let me move in with you, didn’t you? I had my reasons for all this, but I never pretended to be something I wasn’t to impress you. Shoot, you give up God just to be with a good-lookin’ dude. And it was just that easy too. Maybe you’re the one that should pray for forgiveness.” He picked up his three garbage bags of belongings. “I’m going.”

  And so he did. Taking all of Phoenix’s youth, hopes, dreams, and plans with him, Cedric walked out the door and out of her life.

  ***

  By the end of the “movie,” Phoenix was fully resolved with the idea of taking the rest of the pills and drifting off into a place where she was no longer ugly, no longer alone, and no longer worthless. But a strange thing happened as she attempted to bring the bottle of pills back to her lips to swallow what remained. They slipped out of her grasp and the pills scattered around her. Her eyelids grew so heavy and her head began to swim. She was forced to lie back on the floor, unable to move, unable to retrieve the pills from the ground. She wanted to. She wanted all of the pain, the loneliness, the fear to end. She struggled to lift her arm again to reach, but her arms felt like they weighed several metric tons.

  And the voices and images in her head that had been leading her to do the one thing she could never take back, faded away.

  Phoenix fell asleep drugged and drunk…

  Satan became enraged as he watched Caliel knock the bottle of pills out of Phoenix’s hand, as Uriel lulled Phoenix into deep sleep. It was impossible for her to take the pills now. Satan was enraged and wanted to pummel the angels, but could not get close because there was a wall of light surrounding them.

  “I will get her somehow!” Satan roared as he disappeared.

  Once Satan and his army were gone, Uriel and Caliel, left as well, certain that she, for now was safe.

  It was true that her demons had a small victory for her drunkenness and her severe depression. But the battle had been won by Lord.

  Sure she’d have a hangover straight from Hell when she woke up the next morning.

  But Phoenix would wake up the next morning.

  Thank God someone had been praying for her.

  Chapter 4

  The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

  (Psalm 34:18)

  Almost twenty-four hours later, the shrill ring of the phone caused Phoenix’s head to jerk up off the floor. Her left jaw was covered with the pasty veil of dried drool. Lying next to her on the musty carpet was an empty bottle of vodka and a pile of pills. Phoenix stared at the mess with a puzzled frown until the phone rang again, causing her to groan. The pounding in her head caused the noise to become as shrill as an ambulance siren. She clutched her ears.

  “Stop ringing!” she hissed at the phone.

  She sighed when the call went to voicemail. She reached over and picked up the bottle, prepared to take a few sips to clear the cobwebs in her head, but realized the bottle was empty. Discouraged, she tossed the bottle towards the silver trashcan that was already overflowing with bottles labeled with her preferred brands—Smirnoff, Hennessey, Jack Daniel’s, and for those times she was low on cash, Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

  Struggling to stand, she gripped the side of her bed and pulled herself off the floor. Swaying, she rubbed her temples. Her head felt like a ten-ton helmet. She shut her eyes and rubbed the stiffness out of her neck.

  She staggered out of her bedroom into the living room. Seeing an unopened bottle of Svedka on the dining table, she smiled as she made her way to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of orange juice.

  “I have to have my O.J. in the morning,” she whispered as she limped back to the living room.

  Slumping onto her soft, leather couch, she groaned as her muscles adjusted to the cushions. She twisted off the cap and poured a healthy amount of the vodka into her glass. “I wonder if I should be mixing this stuff with the Grey Goose I’ve been drinking.” She paused with her glass in midair, shrugged, then took a gulp. “Oh well, I don’t think mixing two brands of vodka will be a problem.”

  As she sipped, she thought about how comfortable it felt to be sitting on the cool leather of her sofa in the early-August heat. It was sweltering in the apartment, but Phoenix did not have energy to get back up to turn on the air conditioner. Sighing she laid back. “I should sleep on this from now on. My fat behind can’t handle another night on the floor.”

  Tears rushed to her eyes as she thought about her new sleeping quarters—a small corner on her bedroom floor. She couldn’t think about sleeping on her bed after what Cedric had done on it. Worse, she couldn’t sleep on that bed alone.

  Her mind drifted back to the spilled Ambien pills she had found, scattered near her place on the floor. She hadn’t taken them since the previous year, when she’d started developing insomnia. She had only taken them for a week before deciding to handle her sudden anxiety- induced insomnia with relaxation exercises and the occasional glass of wine. To see the pills scattered beside her left her baffled. More than that, she was afraid to think about what she had planned to do with them in her drunken haze. She had an unshakable feeling that God had somehow spared her from something, something that had to do with her being drunk and depressed, and taking out an old bottle of sleeping pills. As a psychologist, she knew of so many cases of people that gotten depressed and intoxicated, and while under the influence, performed some impulsive act that permanently injured them or even led to their death.


  “Did I try to…oh God. Would I even—?” She gulped down a little more courage as her stomach tightened.

  She sat and sipped and focused. She needed to remember the details of the previous night but kept drawing a blank. She shuddered. “I don’t remember anything. I have no idea. I don’t think I would have, but God? If You’re listening, sorry about whatever I was going to do. Thank You for keeping me from doing something I could never take back.”

  She stared at the glass of liquor in her hand, wondering if she should put it away. Naw, she wasn’t ready for that. Instead, she got up and threw out all prescribed and over-the-counter medications in her medicine cabinet.

  Just in case.

  Taking another gulp of her morning drink, she longed for that fuzzy feeling in her head that would ease the fear eating away at her gut. “No, I am not ready to give up my friend, Mr. Vodka yet. And I am going to start sleeping on the couch, until I can save up enough to get a new bed.”

  When she was done with her drink, she slammed the glass on the coffee table and poured herself some more vodka. “Yep. I’m going to get me a new bed, then I can sleep on it again…”

  Her heavy eyelids began to droop as she relished the nap that was slowly overtaking her. She appreciated her new mid-morning ritual. Vodka, nap, and takeout. After all, she had not slept well in two weeks, ever since her fiancé had left. She would sleep for a little while and then—

  The phone began to ring again. “Dag!” Phoenix cursed herself for buying a phone with so many headsets. “I mean, we lived in a one bedroom apartment. Why did he have to have so many phones?”

  She snatched the phone from the coffee table and considered letting it go to voicemail. But then she remembered that it had been two weeks since she’d last spoken to her family…to anyone, really. A small part of her realized that it might have been an emergency.

  Before she changed her mind, she hit the TALK button. “Yes, hello?” she barked.

  “Fe-fe?” Her mother high-pitched Haitian accent filled the line. “Where have you been? I have been worried sick! I called you so many times! I came by your place, called your friends, and called your work. Your boss told me you took a sudden vacation. Your other boss told me you quit! Why did you quit your second job? How will we pay for the wedding? Me and your brother came to your place and could hear music, but you wouldn’t open the door. I knew you should have given me a copy of your keys. What if something happened to you? Why are you off from work? Why are you not answering your phone or door? Why—”

  Phoenix grabbed her head. “Mom! Look I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I am sorry. I just needed some time to myself.”

  “Time to yourself? What in God’s name are you talking about? And why do you sound like that? Are you sick? Where’s that man you live with? I called his phone so many times and he never returned my calls! Did that man do something to you?”

  Phoenix almost chucked at her mother calling Cedric ‘that man.’” She disliked Cedric ever since their first meeting and refused to call him by name. Her mother, a woman of her word, had said that she would never speak his name until he got a job and married her, instead of being her live-in boyfriend who lived off of her. She blamed Cedric for causing Phoenix to do the very thing she had been raised never to do—live with man out of wedlock. In spite of her displeasure with Cedric, she was thrilled her daughter would finally be married, having believed Phoenix would never capture the attention of a man as handsome as Cedric. She had hoped Cedric’s gorgeous mixture of African-American, Indian-Trinidadian, Chinese, and Caucasian roots would be passed down to her grandchildren. It was that hope that had fueled her decision to borrow against her retirement fund to help pay for their wedding.

  Taking a breath, Phoenix blurted, “No, Maman, he’s not here. I asked him to leave.”

  Silence.

  “Mom?” Phoenix cringed. She was grateful that the vodka was making this conversation bearable. “Mom?”

  “But you’re supposed to be getting married! I didn’t like it, but you might as well, after living with him, and taking care of him, for the past couple of years. Cedric has taken your youth, and your money, and now you will not give him your hand in marriage? You kids are backwards, I swear it. Why would you wait until now to break it off? Now, after I’ve spent so much money, after members of your family have scheduled vacation time from work and bought plane tickets to attend this wedding? Why now? I don’t understand how—”

  “Mom!” Phoenix shouted. Struggling to get her voice in check, she gulped more vodka. “Look, I am sorry I worried you, but I don’t want to talk about Cedric. Just know that the wedding is off, alright? That’s all I want to say right now. As far as talking about it goes? I don’t want to, okay?”

  Her mother gasped. “Oh! Listen to the way this girl speaks to her own mother. Oh yeah, Fe-Fe? After what you’ve put me through, you will be talking about it, and I mean today. ‘Tende? (You hear me?) I expect you here in one hour, you get it?” She slammed the phone down.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Ma, that the expression is ‘got it?’ not ‘you get it?’” Phoenix held the phone, staring at it, daring herself to call her mother back and to remind her that she was not a child and she was not coming over.

  But she didn’t.

  She may have been drunk but she wasn’t crazy.

  Groaning, she heaved herself off the couch, stumbled into the bathroom, and turned on the shower.

  And knelt by the toilet to force some of the alcohol out of her system.

  As she did, she wondered if maybe just once, her mother would help her through her pain.

  Chapter 5

  Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close. (Psalm 27:10)

  Exactly forty-two minutes later, Phoenix was getting out of a livery cab on West 179th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, in front of her mother’s public housing building. She could have driven the thirty blocks from her apartment, in her car that she rarely used, but didn’t trust herself with all the alcohol she had consumed, in spite of her efforts to regurgitate it.

  She nodded at the same old men she had grown up watching, as they spent their summer Saturdays on old egg crates, playing card games, debating politics, drinking their small half-pints of Georgi Vodka from brown paper bags, with lit Kools dangling from the lips. “Hey Mr. Kembro, Mr. Salas, and Mr. Rodriguez.”

  “Alright now,” Mr. Rodriguez grunted towards Phoenix then smirked. “Long as you’ve stopped to chat, might as well come over here and adjust me in my wheelchair, Mija. My legs keep bothering me.”

  “Sure thing,” Phoenix groaned, wanting to tell him that she had not stopped to chat, but to say a quick hello. She walked over to the wheelchair and helped Mr. Rodriguez lift himself further back into his chair so his amputated leg would not rub the hard plastic edge of the chair. “That better?”

  “Yeah. You here to see your mama?” he asked as he patted her arm in greeting and gratitude.

  Phoenix smiled, remembering that long before Mr. Rodriguez had lost his leg, he had shown interest in her mother, after her father had divorced her mother and gone back to Haiti for good. He had been kind. After his wife died suddenly, Mr. Rodriguez had leaned on Magalie for support. Eventually he had tried to woo her mother, always bringing some Dominican dishes and pastries from his family’s restaurant, or flowers for her mother on the mornings after her overnight shifts as a Home Health Aide. He would ask her out, but her mother kept accusing him of looking for a woman to take care of him. Having been heartbroken, Magalie kept testing his true feelings for her. She had put him through many challenges, often reacting in a critical, judgmental, and cold way to Mr. Rodriguez’s efforts to get close to her. Eventually, her mother’s angry, bitter, distrustful spirit had caused him to give up on her forever. Of course, that was when her mother figured out that she was in love with him.

  “Yes. She wanted to see me.”

  “How’s that fella your mama keep saying you getting married
to?” Mr. Kembro asked. He was looking at her now, his eyes skimming her over the reading glasses perched on his wide nose.

  “He’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Phoenix lied, as her cheeks burned. She was thankful for once that she had such dark skin.

  “Well, Young Lady, you got to get ready for that wedding of yours. Every time I seent ya, ya look like you was puttin’ on even more weight, Phoenix. And you used to be such a pretty little girl, too, even with that dark, dark skin of yours! You was cute! I know that man is wit’ you, but you see, men, right? We are visual creatures. Ya got to look ya best to keep a man int’rested. If ya don’t, ya can expect a life where ya’ll be up wee hours in the morning looking for him to come home. Mark my words, Honey.”

  Mr. Kembro’s careless words almost drowned Phoenix like the harsh white waters of the Colorado River. He had no idea how close to the truth he was as he dealt out another hand for them to play cards. Mr. Salas, always the quieter one in the bunch, nodded vigorously.

  “I-I know. You’re…right, Mr. Kembro,” Phoenix bit her lip to stop its tremble and was thankful for her sunglasses. “Well, I got to go up and—”

  “Fe, it’s not just about weight,” Mr. Rodriguez let his grumpy demeanor fall away as his eyes came to life with compassion. “Some men like women who are more… thick. It’s about taking care of yourself, really. Look at me? I always looked pretty trim. But I had that sugar and refused to listen when the doctor told me to cut back on the foods I loved to make when I ran my restaurant. What Dominican person don’t like their maduros or their café con leche, very sweet? But me? I didn’t listen. Now, I have half of one leg and the other ain’t working out either, which is why they got me in this chair. Those foods we all like, the things we do instead of exercise? They mess us up.”

  “Yeah, and I can see ya poor diet is messin’ with ya skin too,” Mr. Kembro interjected, looking up from his card briefly to peruse her, before tossing a card onto the small table between them. “With skin dark as molasses, last thing you need is pimples.”