I Don't Want to Lose You Page 12

  When Manny was ready for school I told Mrs. Cabrera to go back to bed and get some rest. She had come home from work just a few hours before. When Theo was ready, all three of us left. I dropped Manny off at the school where I had first laid eyes on his brother. Then we went to the doctor where Theo continued reading his book while we were waiting.

  I had liked Dr. Mendoza. He was very gentle with Theo and took the time to answer the questions that I had. He said that it sounded as though Theo’s heart was doing well and that no fluid was building up in his chest. He noticed that he put on a couple of pounds and was glad to see that since he had been heading in the opposite direction. Although Theo was embarrassed that I brought up sex and its effect on his heart, his doctor answered my questions and alleviated only a few of my concerns. When it seemed that the appointment was over, Theo asked me if he could have a minute with the doctor. I went ahead and stepped out and wondered what in the world he could be asking him about but opted to not make a big deal out of it. It’s not like I could have stayed in the room and he could talk to Dr. Mendoza in Spanish since I would have understood the majority of what they would say.

  When we left the doctor’s office we went back to the house and read to each other and watched some television court shows while his mother was sleeping. Ralph came over and took Theo out of the house for a few hours. I told them I would have a chocolate cake ready for them when they came back. I spent the time making the cake and cleaning the house. I did my best to make sure that I didn’t rearrange anything as I did not want it to appear as though I were usurping the lady of the house’s position.

  When Mrs. Cabrera woke up in the afternoon I made us lunch. I caught her up on the doctor’s visit and we just sat and talked about stuff like women do. She asked me questions about myself and my family. I also asked her questions to get a better idea of who she was. We finished the lunch with a slice of cake. She thanked me for cleaning and for the lunch in which I told her it was the least that I could do. Then she retired back to her room.

  I was in our bedroom straightening up and trying to find more space for my things when I heard the guys come in. I walked into the living room to see them with Puppy.

  “Hey, Mon,” started Ralph, “is that cake ready?”

  “Sure is. I can cut you a slice,” I said.

  “Oh no, I can do it,” Ralph said.

  With that I went back into the bedroom and continued with what I was doing. A couple of minutes later I went back to the living room and asked what they were out doing for the past few hours. I didn’t get an answer due to what happened next.

  They all had just started eating the cake when Puppy got this disgusted look on his face and said, “This taste like chicken shit.”

  To say I was appalled would be an absolute understatement. It took a moment for me to catch my breath. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked.

  He was trying to spit out what had been in his mouth onto the plate. “I said this taste like chicken shit.”

  Now had this been a movie, this would have been where the sky would suddenly turn near black. The terrifying sounds of thunder accompanied by venous lightening would be striking around the house. The wind would be furiously howling as everyone feared what was to happen next.

  “Puppy,” I started, “if you don’t like it, then all you have to do is say that you don’t and not take another bite. That would be less offensive than using language to describe it that you know that I don’t like.”

  “I’m sorry, Monica,” Puppy said, “but this really taste like it.”

  My hand immediately went to my hip and my neck started rolling as I gave him the look of death. “So are you telling me that you have gone behind a chicken that had just pooped and picked it up and ate it so that you could know exactly how it tasted in order to make a comparison of it in the future?”

  Theo and Ralph were snickering but careful not to say anything.

  “No, I’ve never done that,” Puppy answered. “But had I done it, I’m pretty sure it would have tasted like this.”

  How dare he say that?

  This would have been the time in the movie when it would seem as though the finger of God was about to punish the wrongdoer. The problem was that God wasn’t the one who was offended. I was, which made my ghetto alter ego, Bonewalaquishanae, come out. I walked over to Puppy and pushed the plate in his face. Theo and Ralph laughed hysterically. I began to walk away but then turned around and literally attacked Puppy by jumping on him. The chair he was in fell back and I landed on top of him and began to slap his face like a pimp slapping his prostitute while demanding his money.

  Ralph said, “Oh man, she’s gonna kill him!”

  As I was smacking him I was yelling, “Don’t you talk about my food like that! I will kick your butt. Who do you think you are?” While getting slapped to death, Puppy was yelling at Ralph and Theo to get me off of him, which they eventually came and did after they stopped rolling over in laughter. Once they got me off of him, I told Puppy that he was now on my list.

  Theo grabbed my hand and took me to our room and closed the door. He had tears in his eyes from laughing so hard.

  “I’m glad you and Ralph think it’s funny that someone’s insulting my food like that,” I said angrily.

  He calmed himself down and tried to put a serious look on his face but I was not fooled. “Babe, the cake is delicious. Ralph had gotten some dirt and cat sh..,” he stopped to change his word, “poop and had it in a bag and put it on Puppy’s cake when he wasn’t looking. That’s why he didn’t want you to get the cake for us.”

  “So his slice really did taste like poop?” I asked as my face turned to disgust.

  “Yep,” he said while trying to control his laughter.

  My head fell. “Oh no. He was being tortured by you two and then I came in there and attacked him.”

  He let the laughter come out. “You were like a pit bull beating a puppy down. I hope you never get mad at me like that.”

  I was so embarrassed that I lost my cool like that. We went back out to see Ralph and Puppy cleaning things up.

  “Puppy,” I said in my most sincere voice while looking like an innocent five year old who had just broken her mother’s favorite vase, “I’m sorry I slapped the mess out of you and put the cake in your face.”

  “It’s okay. It was their fault,” he said pointing at them having been informed about the joke. “But it was kind of funny.” He started to chuckle.

  “Let me get you a poop free slice of cake and you can go rinse your mouth out and clean your face,” I said and went to the kitchen. With that the wind subsided, the gray skies turned blue and the birds were singing a happy song.

  Not too long after his band members came by to practice in the garage. I sat at the kitchen table with Manny and helped him with his homework while helping Mrs. Cabrera do simple things to make dinner such as grate cheese and chop tomatoes. That’s when I found out in another month it would be their twentieth anniversary. They didn’t have anything planned.

  I asked her questions about Theo to find out more about his childhood. I loved the man but wanted to know the things that happened to make him the man he was. I asked her if he had ever been on a plane and she said he had for a trip that he took in the sixth grade to Washington D.C. through a program at his school. I asked her if he had ever been to San Diego. I found out that he had about ten years before. They had gone on a family vacation and wanted to go to the zoo and Sea World. They were able to make it to the zoo but the trip was cut short due to being notified that her mother in Mexico had passed away. Since they were right there near the border, they decided to forgo the rest of the vacation and head over to Mexico.

  After she had no longer needed my help with prep work and Manny was done with his homework, I went into our room to figure out other things that I could do to help him with his list. I made some phone calls to make sure that age wouldn’t be a problem with a couple of things since we were both under twen
ty one and I had to make sure that I was getting the best, affordable deal possible.

  When dinner was over Theo helped me with washing dishes and then we took showers to get ready for bed. We were sitting on the bed watching television when I remembered that I never found out what he and Ralph had done earlier in the day, so I asked him again.

  “I need for you to promise me you won’t overreact,” he said.

  “You’re making me a little nervous here. What did you do?”

  “Let me start by saying that I asked the doctor if it was okay to do it so I don’t want you to think that I was disregarding my health. He didn’t necessarily recommend it but said it wouldn’t kill me.”

  “Theo,” I slowly asked, “what did you do?”

  He took off his t-shirt and there was a pad taped over his heart. My heart started racing because I didn’t know what to expect. I was preparing for the worst. He took off the pad and there was a fresh tattoo next to a scar. It was the shape of a rectangle and looked similar to a “Hi. My name is___” badge. It read, “This heart is property of: Monica” with the actual cursive signature of my name.

  I was speechless. I was never a tattoo person nor had any expectation of anyone dedicating a tattoo to me. I did have to say, though, that this was pretty cool.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  I nodded my head. “That’s really sweet.” I bit my lower lip determined not to get emotional.

  “This is my ‘do something awesome for my wife’ thing on the list. Is this awesome enough?”

  I nodded, still biting my lip.

  “I would have had them put your picture on there, but I didn’t want you getting worried or mad about putting that much ink on myself. Are you happy?” he asked skeptically.

  I nodded.

  He covered the tattoo back up. He leaned over to kiss me, starting off sweetly and then turning passionate. Hands were going all over the place and then he was on top of me. Just as I was thinking another thing might be getting checked off of the list that day, we were interrupted.

  “What are you doing?” Manny asked standing right next to the bed looking at us.

  We immediately stopped and started speaking at the same time.

  “Dang it, Manny, why are you in here?” yelled Theo while I said, “Oh my goodness.” Theo got off of me.

  “I always come in here when I have a nightmare,” Manny answered.

  “You have to knock before coming in here,” stated Theo.

  “Why? I never had to knock before,” Manny said.

  “Because Monica’s here now and you can’t just walk into a room that a girl is in without knocking,” he answered.

  “Okay. Sorry Monica,” Manny said innocently.

  “It’s okay,” I told him.

  “Can I get in the bed with you guys?” he asked.

  “No,” Theo said forcefully as I sweetly said, “Sure.”

  Manny decided to listen to my answer and climbed into the bed in between us. He looked at Theo and noticed the pad on his chest. “What happened to your heart?” he asked. Theo showed him the tattoo. “Whoa, that’s so cool! Don’t you think that’s cool, Monica?”

  “It’s the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” I answered. “Your brother and I read at night. Do you want to listen to us read?”

  He nodded unaware of what he was going to be in for.

  “I didn’t want to read right now,” Theo said smiling, finally finding the humor in the most inopportune situation.

  “Get the book, love,” I said.

  Manny got comfortable next to me and put his head on Holly and Dolly. I rubbed his hair which gave me fond memories of Theo’s hair.

  Theo pouted. “That’s my spot and those are my fingers.” He sighed and began to read unenthusiastically.

  Within ten minutes Manny was fast asleep. I walked Manny back to his room and tucked him into his bed. I went back into our room, took the book from Theo and placed it on the nightstand. I got under the covers and told him to get in his spot that was previously occupied by Manny. I kissed the top of his head and stroked it until he fell asleep as I watched A Different World reruns.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  I had planned a weekend getaway for us. After I got off of work on Friday, I picked him up and drove us to Palm Springs while he read the book. I was determined for us to have a couple of things checked off of his list before we went back home. We checked into the hotel and dropped our stuff off in our room and went to a restaurant for dinner. When we got back, he put his pajamas on and I went into the bathroom to change into less clothing. As I was getting my hair and makeup together I was quietly singing “Let’s Get it On” by Marvin Gaye because I was determined to get some sexual healing. I gave a quick prayer asking that my birth control pills work since I forgot to get him some stuff and I was not good at remembering to take them like I should. I made sure Holly and Dolly were in position and ready for action.

  “You girls ready to go?” I asked them. They replied affirmative with two boob pops. “Let’s do this.” I opened the door.

  He was reading the book and then turned to look at me. His eyes widened and he threw the book on the floor. “Dang girl, you look sexy.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad you like it.” I walked over to him and put a confused look on my face. “Now where were we when Manny came in the room the other night?”

  It didn’t take long for us to resume right where we left off. And he lived to talk about it.

  Check.

  The next morning we ordered room service for breakfast and then we went out and took our time walking around town and did a little bit of shopping, especially to get souvenirs for Manny. We went back to the room, dropped our stuff off and got our coats and gloves. We got on a shuttle that took us to a cable car tram that traveled to the top of the mountain. We played in the snow for a while and then left to make our reservation at one of the few restaurants on top of the mountain for lunch. We took the cable car back down and went back to the room. My priority was for us to have a nice time, but I didn’t want him to overdo it and then not have energy for anything else on my agenda.

  He had an agenda of his own apparently because there was a repeat of the night before and he didn’t die. I had to forget about my concerns of him being tired because I started to get exhausted. We ordered room service for dinner.

  Check.

  Sunday morning we got up before the sun thought about waking up and left to go do the surprise I had in store for him. When he saw the sign for what we were about to do, he was so giddy.

  “A hot air balloon ride? This is going to be so cool,” he said.

  It was great. We got to watch the sunrise and drink sparkling apple cider since we were too young for the champagne. He didn’t say much and I didn’t want to ruin it for him. He just wrapped his arms around my waist and put his chin on my shoulder and soaked it all in. Every once in a while he would kiss my cheek and point to where he would want me to look or what he wanted me to take a picture of. I tried to savor everything about the moment. The warmth of his body against me. The heat of his breath when he spoke in my ear. The feel of the slight breeze that patted against us. The sight of being elevated over everyone and everything. It was unforgettable. A sunrise would never be the same for me.

  When the ride was over, before we got into the car, he gave me the sweetest kiss.

  “This has truly been the best weekend of my life. I have never enjoyed myself so much and I’m so glad it was with you,” he said.

  “I feel the same way,” I said.

  “I wasn’t really expecting to be able to fly, but I should have known you would make it happen.”

  “I’m a woman of action, baby,” I said with sass.

  “I know. That’s one of the reasons why I love you.” He took my hand and kissed it. “Ma cherie.”

  Check.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  It’s not always easy to find people to be in your life that you can depend on,
even in your family sometimes. With them it has to be tit for tat. They have the “if I do this for you then you do that for me” mentality. I had never been that way and didn’t understand how people could be. It is sometimes funny for me to think of how a couple of the girls I had thought were my friends and were going to be my bridesmaids suddenly lost interest in me and stopped accepting my phone calls when Nathaniel was no longer my boyfriend. Even though I met most of them by means of him, I thought that our friendship was genuine but it wasn’t. It’s possible that they figured since they knew him first then their allegiance was actually to him when we ended. It could also be that I had nothing to offer anymore to them and their boyfriends such as football tickets to UCLA games. I walked away from possibly being married to someone who had NFL potential and they would get more advantages from being my friend. I didn’t think I lost much by losing them, though. It was a lot of tit from me but hardly ever any tat from them.

  My dad, however, was always a person I could depend on. Sure, he may have missed a couple of dance recitals growing up or missed my spelling bee victory in fifth grade. I understood because a fireman had to be on call for 24 to 48 hours at the fire station. There were times when he picked up extra shifts and we wouldn’t see him for a few days before he became a captain. But if we said, “Dad, I need you,” he did his best to make it a priority. This time was no different.