Free My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due Page B

She’d just seen him vanish into Sy’s office. Lord, was he going to tell their boss already? Now she was nervous.
    “I hate to talk about your husband, but you know what? He’s always tried to monopolize you, from the beginning. I’ll never forget how he carried on that time we wanted to see Janet Jackson. I mean, damn, he couldn’t let you go for one night? And you were so afraid you wouldn’t find a man that you put up with it.”
    Ouch. Alex was right, at least partially. Jessica was grateful she wasn’t in her sister’s shoes; Alexis was single now, and still looking. Jessica wondered if her sister would ever get married, or if it mattered to her anymore.
    Considering Jessica’s history with black men, David had been a godsend. Jessica and Alex won scholarships to a lily-white private school for gifted children when they were young, so they’d been socialized around whites except at church. When the scholarship money ran out, Jessica’s adjustment to a mostly black public high school hadn’t been easy. Huddles of black football players snickered at Jessica when she walked past, a gangly bookworm. One boy Jessica didn’t even know sneered at her, saying she must want to be white since she was in honors classes with all of those white kids. To fit in, Alex had taken on a homegirl demeanor and found a boyfriend in high school, but Jessica never did. She’d felt like the same outcast in college, even with twenty pounds more shape and a sassy haircut.
    Then she met David, who was so different himself. She thought many blacks were so quick to judge her based on nothing; but David never made hurtful assumptions about her, and that had been such a relief.
    Alex never saw it that way. Jessica remembered the sting she’d felt after introducing her sister to David in the beginning; Alex had already ripped her ear open for going to bed with a professor, especially so fast, but Jessica had hoped her sister would be as impressed as she was by David’s mind and manners, not to mention his incredible face. Didn’t happen. After spending only one afternoon with her and David, Alex told her later: “Jessica, don’t buy it. That man is running a game on you. He’ll never really care about anybody but himself.”
    It had been a mean thing to say, Jessica thought. Mean and unjustified. Just because David had been shy with Alexis there? Because he wasn’t good at chitchat? Or maybe he seemed a little arrogant? What about all of the good things? Alex admitted she still couldn’t give Jessica a concrete reason for her first impression, and sometimes Jessica was convinced her sister had never learned to see past it.
    “Look, it’s not like I snapped up the first loser who came along. Is it?” Jessica asked.
    Alexis sighed. “No, girl. That’s not what I mean. You know David is something else. He’s fine, he’s intelligent, a model father. And he’s good to you, too, most of the time. I just think you tolerate all his clinging because you don’t think you have a choice.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Jessica said, “I’d rather have him clinging than walking out the door.”
    Alexis sighed, but didn’t say anything.
    “What?” Jessica asked.
    When Alexis spoke, her voice was low and stern. “It just pisses me off,” she said. “Look at the guilt trip that man has put on you. Like all you’re supposed to do with your life is sit and hold his hand. I don’t know where he gets that, but that’s not the way it works. Here you are about to accomplish something meaningful, and instead of toasting you with champagne, your own husband is making you feel like shit.”
    “I know,” Jessica said softly.
    “You think Daddy was ever like that with Mom? Hell, no. David should be boosting you up, not holding you down. You write that damn book, girl. Do you hear me? You write it. And then you write a whole bunch more.”
    Jessica smiled, grateful to have Alexis to talk to. She’d learned long ago not to