We Take this Man by Candice Dow, Daaimah S. Poole Page B

have a safe trip home and I’ll hit you if I need to clear anything up.”
    It was around four o’clock when I yearned to speak to Dwight. I’d spent the past three weeks proving my independence. At the same time, I’d inadvertently grown dependent on him. I picked up the phone. Then I put it down.
Don’t call this man while he’s headed home to see his family
. I knew he had a layover, but I didn’t know where, when, or for how long. Why couldn’t I shake the feeling that this was somehow inappropriate even though I knew it was all about work?
    In the midst of rationalizing the situation, I said,
“Hey . . . Dwight.”
    “What’s up?”
    I really didn’t have a concrete question. Well, actually I did. Where did the desperate need to hear his voice come from?
    “Ah . . . are you in Jacksonville yet?”
    “Nah, I’m in Charlotte. I had to fly standby ’cause I canceled that flight at the last minute. You a’ight up there?”
    “Yeah, I just wanted to know what you consider a short presentation. I have like ninety pages now. And I . . .”
    “I’m sure it will be fine. You’re doing the presentation and you talk a little faster than me, so it’ll be cool.”
    “You’re right.”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay.”
    “What’s with the reluctance?”
    I laughed off the accusation. “It’s not reluctance. It’s just that I know how you are.”
    “You keep asking me to trust you. Do
you
trust you?”
    “What?”
    He laughed. “I’m just saying, sweetie. I trust you, but I’m sensing that you’re not comfortable with this and I just don’t know why.”
    Maybe my lack of trust had very little to do with work and more to do with this sudden vulnerability for my new boss. “Dwight, I don’t know. I’m just used to doing what I want to do with no one to critique it and I just really respect your opinion and it’s important to me that you are satisfied with my work.” His silence made me nervous. I asked, “Are you still there?”
    “Yeah, I’m just trippin’. On the real, I’m proud of you.”
    I frowned at the phone. “Proud of me?”
    “Yeah, man.”
Man?
“Black women are the worst power-trippers in the game. You just made me change my opinion. Y’all not all the same.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Man, y’all are a black man’s worst enemy. God forbid you’re up for the same promotion that he is.”
    He laughed, but I was wavering between offense and success. I didn’t like his assessment of us, but I was proud of his assessment of me. Still, I had to stand up for my girls. “No. History has taught us that we have to fight for ourselves. We never had the chance to sit in our little carriages and be protected from the rain. We’ve always been on the grind, neck and neck with our men.”
    “You got a point. But y’all need to learn how to respect men. That ain’t cute. Let’s make love, not war.”
    My eyes shifted. Was that a personal invitation? I quickly jumped back into the argument without pondering too much on it. “We’re not making war. We’re handling our business because we have to.”
    The wall of misconceptions that initially separated us crumbled as we discussed the dynamics of relationships in our community. Although he was strong and borderline arrogant at work, he had this juvenile innocence when it came to relationships. Most of his knowledge came from books. Compared to me, he was like the pope. He was a committed husband who wanted one thing: to be with his family.
    An hour into the conversation, my ear was pinned to the phone and I was holding on to his every word.
Snap out of it
. Suddenly an overwhelming need to end the conversation came over me. “Well, I actually called you to discuss this presentation. I didn’t expect to get so deep. So . . .”
    “You know you didn’t call about the presentation.”
    His certainty made me stutter. “I . . . I . . .”
    “You just wanted to hear my voice.”
    “Actually, Dwight, I wanted to know if a hundred and