Eva : Part 6

Choose Me
by Xenia Ruiz

(Page 6 of 6)

"Whatever." I was temporarily distracted by Yolanda Adams singing "The Battle Is The Lord's" juxtaposed by the TV clips of the latest suicide bombing in the Middle East.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I have a headache." I began to sort my bills in one pile, junk mail in another, and the latest issues of Hispanic, Black Enterprise, and Diaspora, a new Christian lifestyle publication, in a third.

"You'll be better by Saturday, won't you? I want you to get to know her."

"I don't want to get to know him." So far, all I knew about Luciano was that he was half-Cuban and half-Black. I vaguely remembered Luciano from high school when they first met, before Maya started dating Alex in her sophomore year. Years later they met again at a school where Maya was a teacher and he was a security guard. But by then, she was married to Alex and Luciano had married the first of his three wives. Maya said he treated her like a queen. I told her all men did - in the beginning. But she insisted he was different, as all women who were in love believed. There was no reasoning with her; her rationality was gone.

It wasn't that I sided with my brother-in-law, or that I felt sorry for him, I just didn't like being an accomplice in Maya's tangled web of deceit. After getting over the fact that Alex had seduced my fifteen-year-old sister when he was eighteen, I thought he was a good man, the kind of guy who would be good to her. But then he cheated, and it was almost like he had deceived me also. Initially, I took it personally, but I eventually forgave him, partly because it was the Christian thing to do, partly because he was a good father, but mostly because I didn't have to live with him.

"If you're mad at Simone, I better not tell you what she has planned."

She got my attention. "You better tell me."

"I can't - " she said, then stopped and her voice faded away as she turned to speak to someone in the house. "What? I don't know where it is. Just look for it, sweetie. That's what I do when I can't find stuff." She turned her attention back to me. "She told me not to tell."

"Maya, I am not kidding," I warned. "Blood is thicker than water."

We had all married in our teens, within months of each other. Simone and me were nineteen, Maya was eighteen. None of us had been counseled about going on to higher education since we had worked from the time we were fifteen. We were all anxious to be on our own, so we made plans to get an apartment together. But at the time, we all had boyfriends we loved, and marriage seemed like the next best thing.

Although the youngest, Maya married first. While Alex worked at City Hall, she got her bachelor's and master's in education. They were married almost nine years when their twin boys were born. After teaching for several years, she became one of the youngest principals in the Chicago public school system while Alex became an alderman.

A few months after Maya wed, Simone married her high school sweetheart, Bruce - not because he asked her, but because she wanted out of her parents' house. The marriage lasted a year before she decided she wasn't cut out to be anybody's wife. Instead, she decided to pursue a modeling and acting career. Over the years, she appeared in several magazine ads and acted in a few local plays, even worked as an extra in a couple of big-name movies. In between modeling and acting jobs, she worked as a manager at an upscale hair salon. She lived rent-free in her father's apartment building, and always had men who provided her with almost everything else she needed.

"Okay, okay. She's going to set you up with a guy at the party."

"Ooh. She is so dead." The throbbing got worse in my temple and I began applying pressure with my thumb.

"You're not supposed to know, so don't call her, please? She's just looking out for you." Again her voice faded away. "Alex, honey, I'm on the phone," she said, condescendingly. "I swear every time I get on the phone . . ."

"What's his name? Where did she meet him? Give me details or else. I mean it, Maya."

"I don't know. All I know is she seems to think you have a lot in common with him."

I closed my eyes trying to squelch my anger at Simone while wondering whether my own sister knew more than she was disclosing. The last time Maya introduced me to a man with whom she thought I had a lot in common, he turned out to be an ex-con who had found Jesus while incarcerated. Not that I don't believe in the power of God to transform criminals, but after he beat up a guy who took his parking spot on our second date, I decided he still needed some more Jesus.

"You never know," Maya continued, "this could be your Mr. Righteous."

"Riiigght," I said cynically.

Copyright © 2005 by Xenia Ruiz

About the Author

A graduate of Northwestern University, Xenia Ruiz received First Prize in the university's Iota Sigma Epsilon Fiction Contest for her short story, "Pops." She currently lives in Chicago with her son and daughter.