Getting to Happy by Terry McMillan

where it came from. She doesn’t dream about the whole ordeal anymore. Occasionally, it just shows up and jumps inside her. When it does, she waits the five or ten minutes it takes for her breathing to slow down and she can feel the blood flowing into her fingertips.
    Right now, the sun is peeking through the space between the shutters. Bernadine knows she needs to get her act together because her daughter and a friend are flying in from Oakland this evening. They’re students at Mills College, and it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend. They’re coming to interview for summer camp counseling jobs in Tucson.
    She counts to three, rolls on her side and opens the drawer to the night table. She reaches for two prescription bottles. Swallows the Zoloft dry. She almost doesn’t know why she still bothers taking it every morning, because her spirits don’t seem to have gotten any higher. Next, she grabs the Xanax. When she shakes it, nothing rattles. Her doctor prescribed them years ago to help her get through episodes like this. She doesn’t usually take them every day, but she feels better knowing they’re here.
    She could use one now. “Shit!” she says, pulling the drawer all the way out, hoping there might be an old bottle lying behind the others. But she knows this isn’t the case. She speed-dials the pharmacist for a refill, and without taking a shower, slips on a T-shirt and some shorts, then decides to brush her teeth and wash her face. In less than ten minutes, Bernadine is standing in line behind a little redhead girl who she takes to be about three. Her pale legs are dangling through the slots in the grocery cart. She has a black baby doll squished between her belly and the metal bar separating her legs. She’s sucking her thumb. Suddenly, she pulls it out of her mouth and it falls on top of her baby’s curly head. “Hi,” she says to Bernadine, smiling, her small teeth already protruding.
    Braces are in her future, Bernadine is thinking as she smiles back. “Hi,” she says to the little girl. Her dad, a stocky guy on the verge of being fat, is at the counter, paying as well as listening to how best to administer this medication which is clearly for his daughter.
    “I haven’t seen you in a long time!” the little girl says to Bernadine. She is smiling as if they go way back and she’s delighted to see her.
    “I know,” Bernadine says, knowing she has never seen this little girl before. “How have you been?”
    “Fine,” she says. “You need medicine, too?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Me, too. My belly is always hurting. Does your belly hurt, too?” she asks.
    “No, my belly doesn’t hurt but I sure hope yours feels better soon.”
    “What hurts for you?” she asks.
    “Emma,” her dad says to her. “Just say bye-bye to the nice lady.”
    “Bye-bye,” she says to Bernadine.
    “She’s very friendly, as you can see,” the dad says. “She says the same thing to everybody. Have a great day.” He pivots the cart to Bernadine’s right and whisks down the pet food aisle.

    Bernadine is still mad at herself for marrying James before the ink had dried on her divorce from John. She was feeling like an empty parking space and James simply pulled in. John was her first husband. They were married eleven years. Fell in love in college back in Boston. Had two children: Onika and John Jr., both now in college. Back in I989, Bernadine was taking hot rollers out of her hair because they were getting dressed to go somewhere, though she can’t remember where, when out of the blue John told her he wanted a divorce. She does remember snatching those rollers out of her hair and hurling them at him after he told her it was Kathleen, his bookkeeper, who was ten years younger than her, and white. For years, Bernadine hated John for the premeditated way he slung this news in her face. They had made a pact in college that if their feelings toward each other started to deteriorate they would let the other know