Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel for Grown Ups Read online

  A Novel for grown-ups

  Jayne Allen

  A Quality Black Book

  Quality Black Books LLC, Los Angeles, California

  Copyright © 2018 by Jayne Allen (pen name)

  QUALITY BLACK BOOKS and its logo symbol are trademarks. All rights reserved.

  For announcements, special free content, limited-edition releases, and an all-around good time, join our mailing lists!

  To do so, visit: www.JayneAllen.com or www.QualityBlackBooks.com

  Follow us on Instagram: @JayneAllenWrites, @QualityBlackBooks

  Follow us on Twitter: @JayneAllenSaid, @QualityBlkBooks

  First Edition: September 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7326968-1-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-7326968-0-8

  Cover design by Monira Mussabal

  Book design by Tara Mayberry, TeaBerryCreative.com

  BLACK GIRLS MUST DIE EXHAUSTED is a fictional work. All names, events, incidents, locations, personal features and/or characteristics, and dialogue are either simply made up in the author’s wild imagination, or they are used coincidentally as fictional story elements. It’s a great story, but none of this is actually true. The characters contained in this book are not intended as semblances of any person living or dead. This book contains mature subject matter.

  If you are or someone you know is in crisis, there are resources to help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides around-the clock support free of charge and on a fully confidential basis. The toll-free number is 800-273-8255.

  Visit their website at: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

  acknowledgments

  I wrote Black Girls Must Die Exhausted to show that love is the language that we all speak and the very lifeblood of our existence. Love comes in many forms—self-love, love between friends, familial love and romantic love, amongst them. In fact, this book itself is my love letter—to you, to black women, to women and to all those who understand the beauty that comes through struggle and the benefit of doing their own work to heal, to understand, to grow, and most importantly, to love more fully.

  Quality Black Books, the publisher of Black Girls, or BGMDE (my preference for an abbreviated reference), was established to provide a necessary expansion of the traditional publishing industry. There is a need for more diverse voices in literature with the freedom and leeway to write undiluted perspectives for more diverse audiences. Quality Black Books is that leeway and that conduit between an overlooked audience of readers and the books they’d like to see more of. We don’t just need more diverse books, we need more diverse perspectives with the expectation and acknowledgment of a more diverse audience.

  If you are looking for ways to support this work, and to encourage more works like it, please consider first writing a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Please also consider spreading the word, following us on Instagram and Twitter and joining the mailing list. The only way to create change is to get started! If you’re new to writing reviews, or would like some guidance, please feel free to visit JayneAllen.com or QualityBlackBooks.com for more information and third-party resources on how to become a powerful, credible and effective objective reviewer.

  Jayne Allen is my pen name, one that allows for freedom of thought and communication, and the exploration of new ideas and unchartered emotional and experiential territory. Thank you for joining the adventure, one book at a time.

  Much thanks and appreciation to everyone who played a role in the creation and success of this book: to our team of remarkable editors tirelessly proofing for misplaced commas, to our early readers providing feedback and pushback when necessary, and to the incredible artists who contributed to the visual representation of the words and ideas of the story—you are appreciated!

  —Jayne Allen

  Chapter One

  The day I turned 30, I officially departed my childhood. Not the pigtail braids, devil may care, “don’t get your Sunday church clothes dirty” kind of childhood. At 30, I just knew it was the end of the dress rehearsal. I was officially grown. And to me, that meant a checklist. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Reliable transportation? Check. Down payment for some property? Check. Dating options limited to marriage material? Check, check and check. That checklist, I had it on lock. But then, at some point, once you get into it, the 30’s throws some major curveball your way and you realize that real life, not just adulthood, is what happens between the lines of that checklist. You learn that life isn’t really about checklist-type problems. And that’s when you have to find out who you really are, because one minute you had all the answers, and the next, you’ve got none at all. So of course, just when I started to gain a comfortable rhythm with regular life kind of concerns, my body went ahead and did the unthinkable.

  “It’s bad,” I heard the doctor say. “I wish I had better news. The reality is, Tabitha, you’re only 33, but without taking significant steps in the next six months, you may never be able to have a family.” I had already left her office, but her voice still trailed me into my car, and stayed with me into my drive to work, echoing in my mind on continuous loop. The only merciful interruption was the real-time computer-generated interjections of Google Maps, steering me around the stubborn LA traffic. Even worse than getting bad news was that it was going to make me late. In my profession, late was tragic; but, on the day of our weekly newsroom meeting, late could mean you just lost the assignment that would’ve made your career. And for mine, I had already fought, cried, bled and eaten far more than my fair share of ramen noodles.

  My mind was racing, so I’m sure it paraphrased, honing in on what was really the most important consequence to a person like me. In reality, the doctor could have been diplomatic. Maybe she said, “you’ll never be able to have biological children” or something like, “you won’t be able to use your own eggs to have children.” But, what I heard did not sound like hope. I had hoped to have “it all” and for me, that included being a wife and mother. In my mind, this version of family was going to be my family. This was going to fill the gap in my life that I had learned to ignore, but could never manage to completely forget. Only, the news on this morning, placed that all in jeopardy. I learned that I have something called Premature Ovarian Reserve Failure. Gotta love that kind of name, right? Rather than a much more friendly “disorder,” the word “failure” is already wrapped right in. So, there’s just no sugar coating this kind of bad. You know what this type of “failure” is caused by? Stress. The crazy thing is, if you asked me just an hour ago, before that appointment, I would have sworn that I wasn’t. “Stressed?? I’m not stressed,” I insisted. Well, really, I protested, but my doctor was unconvinced. Instead, she informed me that studies held all the unfamiliar warnings I’d wish I’d heard before. “It could be little things that you just aren’t noticing,” Dr. Ellis said. “Something happens that seems small at the time, or you’ve become desensitized, but it all adds up. Either way, the test results don’t lie.” But to me, those were just numbers and words, mistakenly delivered to me, but meant for someone else because I did not feel stressed. At least, not before leaving the doctor’s office. I was even normally unfazed navigating the infuriating molasses maze of morning traffic. I could proudly say, I barely cursed, I never had an episode of road rage, I held the door open for people, smiled at strangers and I always made time to put on some lipstick. What was there to be stressed about? Before today, everything was going according to plan—I was dating a “paper-perfect” man, suitable for marr
iage and tall enough for kids; I was up for a promotion; and I had just met my savings goal for a down payment for my very own first dream house. Sure, my family-making hormones were starting to bubble, but I thought I had time. And time meant that family was always something I planned to have, but that didn’t need to be the focus of my thoughts. I focused on my career, my friends, spending Saturdays with my grandmother and loving on Marc, who hadn’t quite mentioned marriage, but I’m sure would eventually. No need to rush Tabitha. That’s what I’d tell myself in every one of those moments even the slightest hint of “where is this going?” started to rise in my belly. Who needs to be pushy about things when you have time, right? With today’s news, I was just starting to discover how very wrong I was.

  In my well-ordered world of focused professional upward mobility, crossed-off checklists and comfortable semi-serious dating, I thought I had prepared for everything. So, how was it being ripped apart at the seams by one little doctor visit that was supposed to be routine? I only went in for a very simple follow-up to review the results of my regular blood tests. I should have known it was a problem when Dr. Ellis insisted on seeing me in person, rather than just sending me an email. Evidently my fertility numbers matched those of a woman about to receive her AARP card. “Your body is working too hard to produce an egg each month,” she said. “It seems like there’s been an imbalance going on for some time. The good news is that we caught it while there’s still time to pursue options in front of you.” Options? In my mind, having a family was never an option. It was a given. Options were for things like the shoes you pack on vacation, or where you decide to meet your friends for dinner when nobody can quite decide what they want. But, I’ve always known what I wanted, at least since I was 9 years old. Because…because at 9, my dad left and married his mistress. Whoa. A memory triggered that I had long ago stuffed into the attic of my mind, far underneath even the dusty schoolbooks and scattered old pictures of my 33-year old life.

  Crap. Distraction caused me to miss my turn, promoting Google to reroute me, proving a perfect metaphor for the moment. How did I get here? It’s not like I forgot that I was single or forgot to have children. Not possible. It hummed in the background on every night out with my girls, every trip to the supermarket and every solo tax return. And once I turned 30, no matter my accomplishments, educational or professional, there was no chance of escaping the question, “so, how come you’re not married yet?” I could almost see it written in cursive on perplexed faces, along the wrinkled expression lines crossing well-meaning foreheads. In the eyes of the even more curious, “what’s wrong with her?” twinkled in Morse code. It felt as if people thought that my degrees came with a free Mrs. option that I didn’t elect for at graduation. It just wasn’t that easy.

  All along, I’d done my share of dating. Dating for me was always for the family you hoped to make, even at some level when I was “just having fun” in my 20’s. So of course, in my 30’s, I was dating with the care, intensity and dedication of a second job. Unfortunately, up to this point, dating itself hadn’t yet made for any relationship that I was sure should or could turn into a long-term plan—not even with Marc. It just seemed that once 30 hit, all the folks for whom marriage meant something, especially the men who considered having a wife and family as an accomplishment in its own right, they’d already taken their nearest best option to the altar. The men that were left and still single, well, they considered it an accomplishment that they had neither wife nor child, and never got “caught up” or “caught slippin” which likened falling in love to unprotected casual sex. They treated love like a disease you catch, and if real adult commitment was the incurable version of it, then for them family was basically death. And goodness knows, I wasn’t trying to kill anybody—what I wanted was that same-page kind of love, the kind between two people where there were a lot more answers than questions.

  So, in spite of my very best efforts and stilettos, even while dating, I’d been as single as a wrapped tampon. Except, for the past year and a half, I was better classified as not exactly single-single. I would have to admit; it took me a while to get centered on what seemed to be more of the right type of dating track for my type of goals. When I started dating, I bee-lined for the boys with hot bodies, actor dreams and table-waiting futures. Coming back to LA from grad school, I realized that I should probably find another responsible “adult” with whom I could at least pretend to build a future. What I got was a doctor who was too busy for me, an artist manager from the music industry who wined and dined me for a month and then ghosted me, and a seemingly mature single dad in his late 30’s who gave me the key to his apartment on our second date and then asked for it back when his mother came to visit two months later. Then, of course in-between, there were the “deceptives” and “time wasters,” who wanted extensive emotional relationships, but in the end only wanted to be friends. LA guys were a special breed, and not just because people came to chase after neon-vivid dreams of wealth and fame. So, when I met Marc, who seemed in every way an educated, handsome professional guy with a healthy amount of swagger and decency, I wasn’t trying to stray too far to the left or the right. At the beginning, I felt lucky, but as time progressed, lucky turned into love, for the both of us, in spite of our schedules. Even when my visibility at the news station started to increase, and I got a lot of offers and attention to make up for the time away from me that Marc spent working, I ignored them, because they weren’t men of Marc’s caliber. Plus, he had my heart. He made me smile, and laugh and when we were together, I felt like the most beautiful and sexiest woman for ten miles. He just had that way about him, that same way that made me feel so lucky in the beginning. Our relationship had long-term potential, although with a heavy emphasis on potential. It wasn’t lost on me that we still only spent weekends together and I hadn’t met his family or shared a holiday. Yes, I knew that I didn’t have forever, but I thought I was doing the right thing—find the right guy, and then give him the time and space he needed to make some moves toward a future together. In the year and a half that we’d been dating, he never once brought up marriage, so I didn’t either. And neither one of us brought up the topic of kids, other than at first to discuss birth control measures. He’d sometimes acknowledge that someday they would be very nice to have, and I’d agree but never push, no matter how badly I wanted to. Knowing that Marc wanted to be a father was enough for my checklist. I thought that I could just wait him out until we got to the right place in our relationship. I just always was so sure that there was time. Today, the shock was still settling in my stomach that there was not. The doctor told me that all I had was six months, at best.

  I hit my palms against my steering wheel in frustration, thinking of all the amount of diligence spent not get pregnant, only to find myself in a situation that when I’d hope to be able to, I possibly couldn’t. Ugh! The idea of the clock running out on my fertility felt like every bad date, every tough breakup and every guy that I turned down in high school had all turned into big, permanent cracks in my life’s sidewalk. I hated the idea that maybe these people had taken something from me that I could never get back. Dr. Ellis said, “options,” but I couldn’t help but to think, what really were my options? Up to then, the only options I’d been concerned with were the stories that I’d pitch in the newsroom, restaurants for dates with Marc and maybe my dream of which little house I’d buy. Now, my newsroom pitches would become do-or-die opportunities to get my next promotion, dates with Marc would turn into critical conversations and my little house evaporated into an expensive egg freezing procedure that I couldn’t even afford. But this car ride from the doctor’s office was no good time to get started on that. I was already late for work and frazzled.

  In between weaving through Los Angeles traffic, what I really needed to do was steal the time at red lights to repurpose my visor as a makeshift vanity and slap a barebones makeup “beat” on my face. It was a special trick controlling a steering wheel with one h
and and contouring with the other, especially since my hand was still shaking. My reflection looked back at me with a grimace. This day, I was definitely without my usual “pretty.” I was a television reporter and yet not a “classic” beauty. So, success for me meant there was the 50% premium on standards to meet, my hair to straighten, and masks of makeup and appropriateness to wear over my brown skin. I managed it all with the composure that you’d expect of a professional, and most of the time, without a second thought. Was this stressful? The need to conform to a standard that I couldn’t naturally meet? Well, today it was. Today, my mind let well-settled ideas unspool themselves from my usual tightly-wound spindle of coping. Today was the first time in a long time that my appearance felt like a burden that I wanted to just let go of. Even as I fought to resume my makeup routine, my mind perched on the verge of becoming an unraveled mess, struggling to find order in the loosely connected thoughts plucked from forgotten memories and the life plans that might no longer apply.

  At a time like this, I wanted to call my mother. Well, I wanted to be able to, but the kind of empathy that this situation required was not in her wheelhouse. I was supposed to deliver grandbabies, not one, at least two and she always told me that she was hoping for three, so that she’d always have a little one to shop for. My mom talked about grandkids all the time, even though she lived on the full other side of the continent in Washington, DC. This conversation was her version of an Outlook reminder for a recurring meeting or appointment. We’d speak on the phone about all things unrelated, catching up on life in our respective worlds, and suddenly, like a ping, the topic would pop up and insert itself into polite conversation like, “so how are things going with Marc and when can I expect to meet my grandchildren?” It didn’t help that I was an only child, at least on my mother’s side, so her only hope of being a grandmother. And I guess all along, I felt like I somehow owed her that. It was her idea of becoming, the next step of her own plan after my father left us for Diane. My idea of family didn’t come from wanting to become someone new; my idea came from wanting to go back to who I used to be. Crap. The robotic voice warned me of a traffic slowdown on my route and I was still twenty minutes out from work according to the navigation ETA. I was close enough to take a shortcut through my old neighborhood and save myself at least 5 minutes on the way to the station. I decided to take the turnoff.