Chapter 5

Level One Complete...

Sunday morning, mom and dad arrived. As soon as her eyes fell upon me, she stated, “My goodness, Jacqueline, are you eating down here?”

I hugged her, “Of course, I’m eating.”

“Leave the girl alone Marva, she looks fine,” said my father as he hugged me. He looked around, “this is a nice place.” He went sat on the sofa and looked out the patio door to a nice view of the sea.

My mother looked around, “It’s so small. I feel closed in.”

“It’s just me living here. So.”

“And long will it be just you,” she asked as she strutted to the patio door with her hips swaying.

“We didn’t come here to harass the girl,” my father commented as he flipped through the channels looking for ESPN.

“I’m not harassing her. Just wondering how long it’s going to take for her to find someone. She ain’t getting any younger. She’ll be thirty before you know it.”

“I still have three years before that happens. So, hungry?”

“No. We stopped and got something before we arrived. Maybe later.” She said as she sat next to my father, “What are we doing today?”

“My friends invited us for a boat ride.”

“Really,” my father said excitedly.

“Ugh, boat ride, girl, I just got my hair pressed. This humidity here is something.”

“It’s no worse than South Carolina.”

“Yes, it is. We live by the mountains, not by the coast.”

“Come on mom, dad really wants to go. We’ll be on the boat. It’s not like Yemoja will come on the boat and pull you into the ocean.”

She turned her lips over, “I told you about talking crazy to me.”

I chuckled. She hated when I spoke of orishas and Yoruba culture. She thought it was demonic. I don’t know why. I had researched our lineage and found out we had roots in Nigeria but she wanted to distance herself from anything that wasn’t Christianity.

Dad smirked; he got his kicks out of watching me mess with her. She turned to him and he pretended to be watching the sports news.

“Let’s just go for a little while. There might be a guy there you can check out for me,” I said with puppy dog eyes.

This piqued her interest, “A guy?” she smiled from ear to ear, “Is he black?”

“Yes. Mom.”

“Okay, call your friends and let them know we’ll come on the lil boat ride but for an hour only. These curls cost me a lot of money.”

“Great.”

When I called to ask Warren to join us on the boat ride, he was ecstatic. He planned to meet us after the church service. He stated he had to go home, get changed, and afterward, he’d meet us at the docks.

While we were there waiting, I introduced my parents to Ro and her family, and later when Warren showed up, I introduced him to my parents. I could tell by her smile, she approved. He was a handsome fellow, tall cinnamon brown, clean-shaven, low cut faded hairstyle, well-spoken, and a Christian. In her eyes, he was the next best thing to marrying Jesus himself.

When we got on the boat, she forgot about her hair and had a good time. She played with Diego. She loved kids and becoming a “gi-gi,” was a dream for her. I wanted to give her that. I smiled as I watched her teach him how to spell different words. She was a teacher by profession and later rose through the ranks to become a principal and later an administrator on the school board.

My father was retired Air Force, a disabled veteran, and spent most of his time volunteering at the VA hospital driving the golf carts and taking patients from their cars in the parking lot to the front door of the hospital. He loved to talk and it gave him plenty of opportunity to tell his war stories to fellow veterans and their families.

“Girl, your mother is loving her some Warren. Does this mean—”

“I don’t know. It’s a perhaps, I’ll allow him a chance to see what he’s about.”

“That’s a start,” she smiled and nudged me. “You’ll be wifed up in a year and pregnant just like I was.”

I chuckled, “We’ll see.” I looked at Warren as he sat speaking with my father happily. Laughing at his jokes, eating up his stories. He looked up at me and winked. I smiled.

Later that night before my parents got ready for bed, my mother stopped by my room, “I just loved your friends. I feel much better now that you’re a little closer to us. I can actually get to you in a day’s drive.”

“Thanks, mom. I’m happy to be closer too.”

She went to the guest room. I took a deep breath. My cell phone sounded with a text from Warren, I looked, “Did I pass the test?”

“Level one is complete.”

He sent back smiling emojis and, “I can’t wait to see what level two is like.”

“You sure?’

“Can I call?”

“Sure.”

That night, we talked until my eyelids became heavy. We finally hung up around 2:00 am and I got some rest.