Getting to Happy by Terry McMillan Page B

cheek. “And thanks for having me. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about you.”
    “Well, O’s prejudiced. Even though I’m not her real mother, I love her just the same.”
    Shy is obviously taken aback hearing this and glances over at Onika.
    “I’m just teasing. Very nice to meet you, Shy.”
    “Whew!” she says.
    Bernadine can now tell that Shy’s dreadlocks are bright red. It also looks like she’s probably mixed with something. Her skin is the color of sand. She’s pretty in an odd sort of way. She also looks athletic. “Well, you sure look like an athlete,” Bernadine says, mostly to see if her assumption is right.
    “Soccer it is,” Shy says, proudly.
    “When did you cut your hair off?” she asks Onika, since it’s almost as short as Bernadine’s was centuries ago when she chopped it off close enough to see her scalp. She did it to piss John off after he’d told her he wanted a divorce. He never liked short hair on women, especially his wife.
    “Shy cut it for me, last week. We were just fooling around. Do you like it?”
    “I do.”
    “Look, we didn’t mean to interrupt your zees, and you do look tired. I just wanted you to know that we got here okay. Didn’t you get my messages?”
    “No. When’d you leave them?”
    “Right before we got on the flight. A few hours ago.”
    “I haven’t checked the voice mail at home and I can never hear that cell phone because I always have it on vibrate.”
    “It’s all good, Mom. We couldn’t get on three flights. Standby from Oakland to Phoenix is really hard. We couldn’t even get seats together, but we made it.”
    Onika smells like blueberries. Bernadine spots the new tattoo on her forearm. It looks like Chinese but she doesn’t want to ask her what it means right this minute. It can wait. Besides, she knows Onika will tell her anyway. There are rings on eight of her fingers. Thin and thick silver bands of various shapes. Onika’s fingers are short, too short for all this jewelry. But she’s young. Bernadine reminds herself to keep her middle-aged, maternal thoughts to herself. “Aren’t you guys hungry? I’ll fix you something really quick.”
    “No, it’s okay, Mom. We had a slice at the airport. We’ll find something to snack on. I want to show Shy around the crib. And our killer view. This is her first time ever in Phoenix.”
    “Okay, but if you change your mind, let me know. I could stir-fry something. It’d only take a few minutes.”
    “Go back to sleep, Mom, we’ll see you in the morning. We’re pretty wiped out, too. Six hours in that airport was taxing. Every college student in the Bay Area was either going skiing or heading home.”
    Bernadine looks at her daughter. She can’t believe her baby is going to be a junior in college and she’s old enough to buy booze. From the time Onika was in high school she’d told Bernadine she knew she wanted to go to a woman’s college. At first it was Barnard and then Smith but she wanted to be close to home so she chose Mills. She’s majoring in social anthropology with a minor in book art. “It’s really about the fine art of bookmaking,” she’d said. She’ll never get a job, but Bernadine wouldn’t dare say it.
    “Thanks anyway, Mom,” Shy whispers, and puts both hands on Onika’s shoulders and slowly shuffles her out the door.
    After Bernadine watches the news she remembers she forgot a few items she needed to make Onika’s favorite omelet: fresh crabmeat, sour cream, tomatoes, black olives, scallions and yellow and red bell peppers. She’d been so busy thinking about dinner she forgot about breakfast. She brushes her teeth and washes her face and hears Jay Leno saying something about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise getting engaged. “It’ll never last,” she says, turning to the screen.
    She leaves the TV on and runs downstairs. It’s freezing in here because she forgot to turn the heat up after she’d finished cleaning. She grabs a bottle of sparkling