I Still Dream About You

What Was Bothering Brenda

AT BRENDA’S LAST OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS MEETING, THE LEADER had said to the group, “The problem is not what you are eating, but what’s eating you!” And unlike a lot of the other gals in the group, Brenda knew exactly what had been eating at her for years.

When Hazel had hired her, it had still been a pretty rare thing: a black real estate agent in an all-white firm. But for Brenda, growing up when and where she had, she had always been an experiment of some kind. Now, after so many years of having to deal with the “race issue” day in and day out, she was tired. Tired of everybody bobbing and weaving all around the subject, never saying what they really thought, herself included. And tired of always having to be careful about not acting “too white” around her own people or “too black” around white people.

When Brenda had been growing up, the issues had been the big, overt, and glaring oversights of voting rights and segregated neighborhoods, water fountains, schools, and bathrooms. But now it was the small, everyday subtleties that were so wearing. She always felt it when white people were walking on eggshells around her, nervous about saying something that might offend her. She just wished people would act normal. When she had been in college up north, all those obsequious professors fawning over her had made her very uncomfortable.

She would have loved to have had a vacation from race, even for a day. But it was always there. And lately, the way the news media kept pitting one side against the other, she didn’t see it going away anytime soon. Everybody seemed to have an agenda where race was concerned. Some to keep people stirred up, others to pretend that it didn’t matter.

That’s why she liked Maggie. Maggie had no hidden agenda; she was nice to everyone. Sometimes too nice and too trusting for her own good. Maggie once spent six weeks driving an old lady all over town, showing her every property available within a twenty-mile radius, only to find out later that the woman was just lonely and liked to go for rides. Ethel said that if the woman hadn’t died, Maggie would still be driving her around town to this day, and it was probably true. Maggie had taken care of her parents for years, and when they’d both had to be put in a nursing home, she had visited them twice a day, seven days a week, and never complained. Brenda admired her, but if she herself couldn’t complain about her family, life wouldn’t be worth living.

Maggie also did nice things for people and never told you about it, but when Brenda did something nice, she wanted people to know about it. Brenda guessed that was why she had always been so drawn to politics and had decided she was going to run for mayor. A politician had to toot his own horn. How else were you going to get votes?

The only college professor Brenda knew for sure had really liked her was her senior year English professor. While working on a project together, they had fallen in love and had an affair, and it had ended badly and broken her heart. Anybody who won her heart now would have to be pretty special. She had tried out a few, but no luck so far. And she figured that, as mayor, she’d be much better off not having a husband at all. From what she had seen, the husbands had turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. She would have been much better off with a wife. They stand by you, no matter what. Even Ethel had said, she would be better off just getting herself a cat. “They clean up after themselves and mind their own business.”