Page 30 of Exit: Us
“I’m leaving out first thing tomorrow morning,” I said it in a way like I didn’t have any plans to come over and see her.
“And you need to make it your business to come over here and see me. I wish you would leave out of Georgia without coming over here to see me. Boy, you better come on. I got all these people over here at the house. I want to brag on my grandson for a little bit. It’s all kinds of food over here. Come on, Gemini,” she was nice, and mean all in the same breath.
Amina was chuckling lowly in the passenger seat.
“You know I’m going to make my way over there. I just felt like pulling your card. I’m about to leave this spot, and I’ll be there within the next forty- five minutes. It just depends on what the traffic is looking like. You need me to stop to the store, and bring anything?” I asked.
“Nope. We have everything. Just bring yourself, and an empty stomach,” she let me know.
“Aight. I love you girl,” I said.
“I love you too, grandson,” and with that, she hung the phone up on me.
Lazily, with my head still thrown back into the seat, with my hands behind my head, I looked over at Amina. She had a look in her eyes, as if she was getting ready to say something to me. I sat back, waiting to hear what it was going to be.
“You don’t think that you should have told her that you were coming with someone? You going to invite a stranger over to her house?” she asked, and I sucked my teeth.
“There you go with that stranger word. You just heard that lady say that she has all kinds of people over her house. Youthink she going to care about me bringing one more? Chill. You with me, so you good,” I said, removing my hands from behind my head, so that I could sit up, and start driving.
The longer I sat here, the harder it was going to be for me to find the energy to start the truck up, and head to Fayetteville. I was tired as hell.
“You want me to drive?” Amina asked me, probably being able to see the tiredness written all over my face. She was smiling with the question, so that let me know that she was just playing.
“Man, hell nah. This shit ain’t nothing like the little SUV that you have at home in London,” I shot, starting the truck up, and then I slowly started looking around, making sure that I was good to go, and drive forward.
“My little SUV? I give SUV?” she asked me.
“Yeah, you give SUV. It’s nowhere near the same though. You not just driving the truck. You driving the trailer too. This a different kind of beast,” I let her know.
“I guess. Oh, and for your information, I don’t have a SUV back home in London. I actually have a couple of cars,” she said that shit sassy as hell, rolling her neck, doing all the things that I loved for a woman to do. Seeing her go there with me, she made me smile, as I pulled out of the lot.
“Oh yeah? What couple of cars you got, love?” I wanted to know.
“I push a BMW 7 series, and a Mercedes S-Class, love,” she responded, being sarcastic, calling me the name that I would often say to her in conversation.
Because I was a car man and knew everything about cars that there was to know, I could actually see her pushing both whips. The whips were fitting. I was just fuckin with her when I told her that she probably had an SUV.
“That’s cool. You give that,” I said, and with a smile on her face, she dropped it.
I was able to get us out of the lot, and onto the main road. It didn’t take me long to hop on I-85. God must have known how tired I was, and that I didn’t have the energy to sit in hour long traffic because once I was on, the highway was opened, with no bumper-to-bumper traffic, and according to the navigation, it might be a clear shot getting there.
“I’ve never been to Fayetteville before. Only Atlanta and that was years ago. I was probably eleven or twelve. It was right before my dad was killed. What is Fayetteville like?” she wanted to know.
“It’s slow out there. Much different from Atlanta. I feel like it’s for a lot of retired people. They got some beautiful ass houses out there though. Wait until you see my grandma’s house. Her shit look like a private estate. It’s peaceful out that way too. She’s been living here for twenty years, and has never had any issues,” I shared with her, and she nodded at that.
“Because I wasn’t at your house everyday growing up, I didn’t see your grandma often. I think we only met a handful of times. I didn’t ask Gianna about her often. What made her leave Miami and move to Georgia?” she asked.
I knew she would ask me that. Being on this truck with Amina, I could tell that she was one of those people to really pay attention to details. Hearing me say that my grandma has only been in Georgia for twenty years, was going to have her a little curious, wanting to find out the cause for the move.
“She retired and just wanted to get out of Miami. Georgia wasn’t new to her though. My grandma went to Spelman for college, so when she retired, it wasn’t like she was moving to a place where she didn’t know anyone. She’s what the world will call a social butterfly. She knows everybody and their mama, so she had a gang of homegirls already waiting for her when she came out this way,” I shared.
“What did she retire from doing?” Amina wanted to know.
“She worked in the healthcare field. Healthcare executive is the actual title. I don’t know all the specifics that come with it though. Just from the talks that I’ve had with her over the years, I know she dealt with the business and operations side of things. She retired early though. She was only fifty. She planned that shit though. She used to always tell me that her plan wasn’t to always work forever. As soon as she graduated college, she jumped right into healthcare. She worked her way up, made good money, invested, saved, and she was able to walk away early. Now, she think she a hot girl, when she needs to sit her ass down somewhere,” I joked, and it caused Amina to laugh.
“I heard her tell you over the phone that some of her Sorors were at her house. Just from the little that I already know about her, and listening to her get with you over the phone, I’m going to assume that she’s a Delta?” Amina asked me, and this time, I laughed at her ability to call that shit out.
“Hell yeah. That’s exactly what her ass is. It’s two kinds of Greek members in this world. It’s people like me; unless you went to school with me, know me personally, or it just comes up, you’ll never really know that I’m Omega. The second type is members like my fuckin grandma. Man, her ass bled crimson and cream. Fuckin hats, license plate frame, pajamas, nails, all the paraphernalia. You not going to catch her without that shit on. I can bet my last dollar that when we pull up to her house, she’s going to have on her crimson and cream. She literally can’t help it,” I was talking shit, and Amina was cracking up in the passenger seat.
